blink
by kitsunerei88
Summary: [Fanfiction of The Rigel Black Chronicles] The ruse has two parts: it has Harriett Potter, and it has Arcturus Rigel Black. Blink, and you'll miss him.


_Trigger warnings: depression, suicide. This fic has been described as "dangerously relatable", and if you need to stop, then stop. _

XXX

There are a certain number of experiences and facts, Archie thinks, that form the keystones of his character.

Being born, for one. Existing is a defining necessity to having character. But beyond that, he thinks that being born a Black, and indeed as the Black _Heir_, is the first foundational keystone to the development of Arcturus Rigel Black.

The Blacks are, despite a dark reputation and a certain penchant for insanity, noble. They are one of the most prominent and, indeed, one of the wealthiest wizarding families in Society, regardless of politics. Because Archie is a Black, he enjoys the finer things in life. He enjoys nice robes, cut in the most modern of fashions, he enjoys good food and entertainment. Because he is a Black, he has the confidence that he can do whatever it is that he puts his mind to, because the Blacks, the ones that aren't insane, are powerful and talented wizards. Like his father before him, even like Uncle Regulus, despite his political leanings. It's right there in their names, isn't it? The Blacks name their children after _stars, _because those who are not insane _are _stars, at whatever they chose to do. Because he is a Black, he has the power, the privilege, to do whatever he can find the courage to do, and he has the power to simply not give a damn what anyone thinks of him.

The second thing to define him is his mother's illness. He was six when she fell ill – old enough to remember the spells of weakness, lightheaded-ness, that marked those first few months. He was old enough to remember the visits to St. Mungo's Hospital, so many of them, endless visits. He remembers crawling onto the narrow hospital bed beside her to sleep, to spend time with her, because she couldn't go home. He remembers when a new potion, a new treatment process seemed to work, and she would be allowed to come home. He and Dad would be so happy for those first few days, the first few weeks, so sure that this time – _this time_ – it would be fine, that they had hit on the right things, and it would all be fine. And then it would turn, and she would decline again, and they would be back at St. Mungo's.

He was seven when she was finally diagnosed - Gehrig's Wasting Disease, a rare but terminal disease. Nothing that any of the Healers could do except to treat the symptoms; they could only make her last months more comfortable. Archie remembers vividly how broken he felt at that moment. It was not contagious, so Mum could come home, live at home, die at home, but in that moment, he lost something. He lost a bit of innocence, a bit of hope, a bit of light. He remembers that night: he and Dad and Mum coming home, and together, crying.

Mum took every potion she was offered, regardless of their side-effects. She fought for as long as she could. Her hair, once a glorious chestnut brown, fell out. She woke up and threw up every morning, lying on the floor in the washroom because she was too weak to stand. She was so weak that Dad had to carry her downstairs every day, putting her in the warmest armchair by the fire. Archie couldn't sit in her lap anymore because she was too frail. In the early months after the diagnosis, Mum read to him – but later, her voice was so weak, _so small,_ that Archie had to read to her instead.

He read so much to her those days, perched on the arm of her armchair. She'd listen to Archie read anything, even the most boring of books, but her favourites were the Tales of Beedle the Bard, and so Archie read those the most, over and over again. He read The Tale of Three Brothers at least once a day, because that one was their absolute favourite, and on his eighth birthday, she, with trembling fingers, handed him a box. He opened it to find a beautiful gold pendant, of a circle in a triangle bisected by a single, bold, line. She explained to him, her voice weak, each of the aspects of the pendant: the line for the Elder Wand, the circle for the Resurrection Stone, and the triangle for the Invisibility Cloak, each one a gift from Death. It is a symbol of their shared love for the story, for all the days she read to him, and later, when he read to her.

It was the last present that he ever received from her, and one he always wore, never to be taken off.

Mum held on. She held on as long as she could, but her life was listed in months, weeks, now, not years. Things got worse and worse towards the end, when Mum couldn't talk anymore, when she couldn't move much, when all she could do was look at Archie, at Dad, with so much love and sadness in her eyes.

He was eight and three-quarters when she finally, after a long and torturous process, let go. She doesn't have a choice – she'd survived nearly a year longer than the Healers thought she would, through sheer force of will, but she'd been worn down to nothing and there was nothing anyone could do anymore. He wasn't angry – some children might have been angry at their mothers for leaving them, but not Archie. Archie knew that Mum fought, and he treasured the time that he had with her. Besides, he had Dad to help him through it.

He and Dad clung to each other, rafts in a sea of sorrow. Archie cried most days, most nights, and Dad didn't cry, but he didn't do much else either. He didn't cook, and Archie learned to make his own breakfasts, his own lunches. Cereal and milk. Toast with marmalade. Toast with cheese. Toast with butter. Sandwiches with cheese. Sandwiches with ham. Sandwiches with honey, sandwiches with butter and sugar, sandwiches with peanut butter and jelly. He was so tired of sandwiches, after a couple weeks, but he didn't know how to make anything else and Dad was hurting so much, so he couldn't possibly ask Dad for help. In those days, someone – Uncle James, Uncle Remus, Aunt Lily, Harry – always came by in the afternoons, to check on him and the contents of their icebox. If there was no dinner on the way in the kitchen, they Flooed home and brought him back two plates.

A month or so after Mum's passing, Uncle James and Uncle Remus came by, sent Archie to Potter Place, and Dad – Dad got better. Slowly, Dad started putting the pieces of their lives back together, and Archie started waking up to find breakfast ready. Lunch became more than sandwiches, though they were still very simple. There were salads, some days, or pasta with sauce, or little flatbread pizzas with pepperoni. Dinners were with the Potters, with Uncle Remus, at Potter Place every night. As Dad got better, some of the dinners move to Grimmauld Place.

Archie started reading about Healing. He started with basic Healing textbooks in the Black and Potter Libraries, moved onto memoirs from the Potters and the Blacks that became Healers, then onto medical journals. He brewed his first Healing potions, little baby potions like the Boil Cure, under Harry's watchful eye, and he reads everything he can about Healing. He knows that it is like to lose someone – he feels that loss, every day of his life. He'll do anything to keep someone else from feeling that loss.

And then there is Harry Potter. There is no way to describe Arcturus Rigel Black without talking about Harry Potter. She is the thread that connects everything in his life; she is the constant presence that is always there with him, for him, as he is for her. They grow up together – they share their clothes, they share their toys, they share their books, they share their beds. Their birthdays are only days apart, and they spend nearly every day together, long days playing at Potter Place or at Grimmauld Place, making messes and pulling pranks. Archie is blamed, most of the time, for the pranks, even if she is standing right there beside him – for some reason, Dad always assumes that _he_ is the instigator. She is at his side through Mum's illness, and it's her hand that steadies him through Mum's funeral, through the burial, when he's sobbing and sobbing and trying to hide it, while Dad's grief is too profound to even weep, while Dad just stands and looks lost. She brightens up his worst days with her acerbic humour, she dampens his most reckless endeavours, and her reserved, dry personality is a constant spark and thorn in his life. She is his cousin, in a roundabout way, but she's more of a sister, maybe even a twin. She is someone that he loves completely and utterly, someone he can rely on for anything, for everything, just as she can rely on him. They are, together, a team, a partnership that has no rival.

He doesn't have words adequate to describe her. She's brilliant. She's daring. She's exceptional. She's a little crazy. She is all the best things in life, and at ten years old, Archie would have died for her – and moreover, he knows that she would do the same for him. They are one team, inseparable. There is no Arcturus Rigel Black without Harry Potter.

So, when Harry Potter comes to him and proposes the ruse, he agrees.

XXX

The day that Arcturus Rigel Black flies to the American Institute of Magic, bearing the name _Harry Potter_ and already registered in the Healing track, he is excited. He is so excited by everything around him – he is excited by escalators that take him up and down the different floors in the airport, he is excited by the little shops that dot the terminal everywhere, he is excited watching the aeroplanes take off and land through the huge, wide windows overlooking the tarmac. His aeroplane is the biggest one there, he would swear it, and it's an effort to keep all his excitement contained because _Harry_ wouldn't be so excited to be flying to America.

He makes his first friend on the flight there. Hermione Granger, his seatmate, is going into Healing too, and she is obviously very kind, thinking about her parents even when she is about to enter a whole new world. She is a little taken aback by his enthusiasm, but she accepts his offer of friendship readily, and they spend the whole flight getting to know each other. She tells him a little about the Muggle world, and he tells her, in turn, about the wizarding one. The flight is so _easy_ for him – Hermione clicks with him almost right away, and they're both going to be Healers, and he has no doubt that Hermione will become his very best friend at AIM.

They reach AIM together, laughing over the new in-jokes they have on the way, and AIM is – well, AIM is not what he expected. He's not sure what he expected, but AIM is not it. It's warmer in the American South, for one, and the school isn't a castle, but a labyrinthine complex of buildings which will be a bit of a nightmare to figure out. And the student body is huge, far bigger than he thinks Hogwarts would have been; there are over a hundred kids in his year alone, and they mill through the hallways and common rooms when he arrives, chattering to the friends they already have, the people they already know.

There are so many other students, and Archie's never been in a situation like this, or at least not one without Harry at his side. He spins, overwhelmed, lost with how quickly some of them talk, with their accents, with their clothes, with their cultural references. This isn't Hogwarts, where they are subdivided into Houses right away, handed an easier opportunity to meet people and make friends in a close and small setting, so Archie clings close to Hermione. He will find his way, eventually, and he's sure he'll meet people just as passionate about Healing as him and Hermione in their classes. He just needs to settle in a little, to adjust to having _so many people_ around him.

He dresses in his best, that very first night. Good first impressions are important, and unlike Hogwarts, AIM doesn't require robes for anything other than classes. He puts on his favourite dress robes, polishing the gold pendant that Mum gave him so long ago, letting the pretty sigil lie shining his chest. He meets Hermione in the hallway outside their rooms, and she's wearing a dress, and they head down to the AIM dining hall together, arm in arm. Everyone else is dressed well too, Archie thinks, but he can't be sure because American fashions are completely different than British ones. It's obvious from the moment that Archie steps into the main dining hall that he doesn't fit in – his clothes are different, his consonants are too sharp and his vowels are too broad, and he can tell that the cloth his robes are made from are finer, higher in quality, than the clothes worn by most of the other students at school.

He catches a few cautious frowns thrown in his direction that night, but when he smiles back at them, ready to introduce himself and start a conversation, they look away quickly and return to conversations with their own friends. Hermione tells him not to worry about it – people are like this, sometimes – so he doesn't. He has Hermione, and they have a spot to themselves at the end of one of the long harvest tables filling the dining hall. Other friends will happen later, he is sure.

And if they don't, that is fine too. Because Archie has Hermione, and he's used to only having one close friend in the world, and Hermione already feels familiar and safe, just like Harry. More friends would be nice, but they're not necessary, and Archie spends his first night at AIM tired, a little jetlagged, talking to Hermione.

Over the next few weeks, it doesn't get better. It's not that the other AIM students are cruel – in fact, they are all very polite to him, but there's something missing, something that just doesn't translate when he talks to them. Some of them, like Sally Hopkins, struggle with his accent, which is a little different that Hermione's, while others seem to glance a lot at the fine make of his robes. His Deathly Hallows pendant garners quite a few stares, and he's not sure what to make of it, especially when he takes the time to explain to a few surprised students its significance.

"It's the sign of the Deathly Hallows," he explains with an encouraging, almost cautious smile at two girls whom he catches staring at it. "The Tale of the Three Brothers, you know? From the Tales of Beedle the Bard. My mother gave it to me because it's our favourite story."

One of the two girls, the one with blonde curls that are tied back in pigtails, whom he thinks is named Thea McKinnon, blinks at him, surprised. "I see," Thea says after a pause, her Southern accent drawing out her words. Her expression is politely neutral, though she seems to be a little confused. She exchanges a glance with her friend, who is frowning slightly, but who shakes her head. They walk away from him with the briefest of goodbyes.

The other students coalesce into friend groups, gravitating towards each other by their shared hobbies, their interests, their histories. Archie sticks to the Healing track – he takes all his classes only with the Healing track students, so these are the people that he lives with, studies with, and he doesn't have the opportunity to meet many people from the other tracks. There are school clubs, but Archie doesn't join any – at first, he tries to find something for Quidditch, but it turns out that Quodpot is the main game in America and there's only a small intramural league where he needs to find six other players to sign up. None of the other clubs or associations stand out to him, and that's fine too, because Archie is at AIM, first and foremost, to learn Healing. Hermione joins an association for British students studying abroad, but Archie doesn't follow her – these are the students who are most likely to return to Britain, who are most likely to find out about the ruse, and he just can't take the risk. It's Harry at Hogwarts, pretending to be him, and it's Harry's life on the line if anyone finds out. Not joining the British Students Society is a small price to pay for Harry's safety.

Even in Healing, though, Archie and Hermione stand a little apart from everyone else. Archie doesn't understand it – they're at the best Healing school in the world, and most of his classmates don't even seem to _care_. The most popular student in their year is John Kowalski, and Archie never sees him without a crowd of four or five others, laughing in a raucous circle. As far as Archie can tell, Kowalski never studies. He never sees Kowalski crack open a book unless it's in class, and the Healer's common room has such a _wealth_ of Healing books that Archie just doesn't understand. On their first quiz, one which both he and Hermione ace with extra bonus points, Kowalski lets out a loud whoop at the mere fact that he passed. Twelve out of twenty, sixty percent, on a quiz that Archie finds to be _basic_. Just reading the textbook would have led to better scores.

"For someone who is going to be Healing people in the future, he's not very serious about his studies," Hermione mutters, frowning in disapproval. "This is information that people's _lives_ will depend on one day – maybe if he didn't sneak out of school, he'd do better. Lam, too."

Francesca Lam, one of John's closest friends, is frowning at her test and folding it over with quick, disappointed movements, tucking it away in her notebook. Archie knows that she failed – she didn't manage to do the basic disinfecting charm at all during the quiz, the one that Archie and Hermione have long since mastered. Performing the charm was half of the marks, so without managing some semblance of the spell, it would have been next to impossible for her to pass. Archie would feel sorry for her, he would have offered to help her, but he barely knows her, and Hermione's comment is new to him.

"They sneak out of school?" Archie asked, his voice betraying curiosity, and a hint of concern.

"Sometimes I see them, along with some others in their group, come in really late on a Thursday night or something. They were out last night, and I overheard them talking this morning about the movie they went to see." Hermione shakes her head, pursing her lips. Archie agrees with her – while he would have nothing against sneaking out of school _per se_, school is first and foremost about learning, not about goofing off with friends. Dad and the Marauders might have snuck out with surprising regularity, but they always finished their schoolwork first, with high enough scores for Dad and Uncle James to become Aurors, for Uncle Remus to go to graduate school. And they were in the _Healing track_ – the things they are learning were critical for saving lives, and a little appreciation of that fact would not go amiss.

Lam drops out of Healing a week or so after that, and Archie thinks it's probably for the best. If she can't focus enough to put her studies before having fun with her friends, as Hermione seems to believe, then she probably shouldn't be a Healer anyway.

It is about six weeks into school when Kowalski approaches him, after Basic Healing.

"Potter, right?" he asks, holding a hand out. "I'm John Kowalski. Can we talk?"

Archie tilts his head slightly, nodding for Hermione to head back to the Healer's Common Room without him, where they plan on going through their Magical Psychology readings together. Archie finds that talking through the readings, quizzing each other on the details, helps him remember everything better, and Hermione feels the same way. Six weeks in, the two of them are the clear front runners in the Healing track.

"Sure," Archie replies, following John to one side of the hall, letting the other first-years pass them by. "What is it?"

"I wanted to talk to you about your pendant," Kowalski says, glancing down at it and shifting a little in discomfort. "It's, um – well, it's a little awkward. I'm pretty sure you don't realize what that symbol means, but a lot of people are finding it really uncomfortable, so they asked me to talk to you about it and ask you to stop wearing it."

Archie stares at him, immediately defensive, and his fingers reach up to touch it. It's a part of him, a part of Mum. "My pendant? Of course, I know what it means. It's the sign of the Deathly Hallows, from the Tale of Three Brothers, in the Tales of Beedle the Bard."

"Yeah, um..." Kowalski sighs and looks away from him, awkward. "Look, what do you know about the Grindelwald Wars?"

"The Grindelwald Wars?" Archie stops to think about it. He knows a little, but not much. It's not one of the topics Aunt Lily covered when she taught him and Harry their letters, their figures, and it's not something that he or Harry have read up on in either of their libraries. It is something that happened before the rise of Riddle and the SOW Party, irrelevant in the light of current British politics.

Archie knows current politics better than history. "Er, in about the late 1920s, early 1930s, Gellert Grindelwald began a war trying to overturn the Statute of Secrecy and rule Muggles."

"Yeah…" Kowalski seems a little uncertain, and his eyebrows narrow a little, but he barrels on. "Well, Grindelwald did a lot of awful things during the Wars – he killed a lot of people, he and his followers massacred No-Majs in East Germany, in Poland, in Russia. My grandparents fought in the Wars and they saw the horrors first-hand." A brief pause. "My grandpa is a No-Maj, too. And he's Polish."

"Yes?" Archie asks, confused. Why is Kowalski telling him about ancient history? The Grindelwald Wars are done, and the Light had triumphed. Albus Dumbledore had defeated Gellert Grindelwald in a pitched duel in 1945. What did this have to do with his pendant? "So?"

"That's his mark, that you're wearing." Kowalski gestures to Archie's pendant. "Grindelwald's followers would brand their victims with it, in the No-Maj labour camps, the ones young and strong enough that they didn't kill them right away. So, um, you can see how a lot of people, me included, would find you wearing it uncomfortable, right?"

Archie flushes, but he has no idea how to explain what he is feeling. There's some element of embarrassment, but its overridden with his overwhelming need to defend himself. He's not anti-Muggle. He is a Healer, sworn to defend life, and he would never join a group that massacred Muggles. He is a pureblood, but Harry isn't, and Hermione is Muggleborn. He traded places with Harry so she could follow her dreams, so she wouldn't have to suffer prejudice based on her blood status. Archie's the furthest thing from any sort of wizarding or pureblood supremacist, and he hates that Kowalski seems to be accusing him of being one.

His pendant _isn't_ the symbol of hate. His pendant is just the sign of the Deathly Hallows, it's a symbol that comes from a fairy tale, centuries old. How can all that be replaced by the actions of _one man_, more than fifty years ago? And Mum wouldn't have given it to him if it had really had such connotations! It is just a sign from their favourite story, and surely Kowalski is being overly sensitive?

"It's not, though," he protests, sounding a great deal more confident than he feels. "It's from an old wizarding story, it's not a symbol of hate. And I'm not—"

"Look, I'm not, like, accusing you or anything," Kowalski interrupts hurriedly, running one hand through short brown hair. "Even if Britain took a lead in the defence, Britain was never attacked directly, and it was American Auror forces who liberated the camps. You didn't know. That's okay. But can you stop wearing it? It's like – people here have family who died in the Wars."

"But it was so long ago!" Archie bursts out. He can't stop wearing his pendant – it's the last birthday present Mum ever gave him, it's the last tangible connection he has to her. And Mum had passed less than three years ago, and the loss is still raw, personal, for him, in a way that it can't be for anyone else at school. The Grindelwald Wars were more than fifty years ago – there was no way anyone at school had even known their family members who died in the Wars. "I mean – I sympathize, but it was given to me by someone really important to me, and the symbol really is just from a fairy tale."

Kowalski sighs, a heavy breath of frustration. "But it's not just that, now, don't you see? I'm not arguing that to you, it's a symbol from a story, but it's not to us. Just – don't wear it, okay?"

Archie's lips tighten, but at least he's saved from the necessity of arguing when Kowalski sees his friend, Lam, coming from another hallway and waving at him. "Anyway, I'm not here to argue symbology with you. Think about it, at least. It makes me kind of uncomfortable, too."

Kowalski nods at Archie, heading off to join his friend, and Archie, in turn, walks slowly to the Healer's Common Room. He isn't sure what to think of that conversation – he isn't even sure how serious it really is. If it were that serious, surely one of the teachers would have raised it with him by now. And Kowalski had only said that it was _uncomfortable_, not anything else.

"What was that about?" Hermione asks, when he takes a seat beside her at their usual study table, pulling out his magical psychology textbook.

"My pendant," Archie replies, shaking his head as he cracks open his textbook to his readings. "Kowalski says it's a symbol of Grindelwald and wanted me to stop wearing it. But I'm not sure… it was so long ago, the Wars, I'm wondering if he's not making a big deal out of nothing. My pendant means a lot to me."

"Hmm…" Hermione tilted her head, tapping her pen on the pages of her textbook. "If you want, I can look it up, find out how serious he was?"

Archie considers it for a moment but shakes his head again. "No, I guess I can wear it under my clothes or something like that. It doesn't matter. Let's study."

By the winter holidays, Archie and Hermione are the top two students in the Healing track, one and two in every class by a wide margin. Their grades are _higher _than perfect, courtesy of bonus marks, and they don't end up making other friends, or at least not close ones. The other students are friendly enough to them, especially when Archie tucks his pendant inside his clothes, but it's already a little too late; he and Hermione stand apart from everyone, defined by their dedication to their studies, to Healing, largely uninterested in anything else. That is not to say that Archie doesn't _enjoy_ his time at AIM – rather, he enjoys it quite a lot, and Hermione isn't Harry but she's wonderful in her own way. She doesn't dive enthusiastically into his pranks, the way that Harry would have, but she goes along with them and she doesn't ask questions if Archie says he can't answer them. She's brilliant, she's kind, and best of all, she loves Healing as much as he does, so they become a twosome.

Harry's letters – or, more often, Uncle James' letters which carry news of Harry – are the only dark spots. Harry has never been a good correspondent, and Archie only receives about two letters from her all term. One of them is about Flint, a castigating letter wherein she scolds him for not telling her about his only friendly acquaintance in Britain, and Archie flushes, ashamed, and writes her back with what little he knows of Flint. He'll do better in the future, he resolves – he'll tell Harry more rather than less, because he doesn't know what might come up. The other is just to plan their trip home, for which Archie writes a long reply including his adventures to get the Polyjuice.

Really, most of his news comes from Uncle James. He hears that Harry was attacked at Halloween, but that she's fine, and Uncle James doesn't know who, or why, or how. There's nothing in the news, and Harry never writes him with an account of it, so he quietly frets about it until he gets home, to Grimmauld Place.

XXX

Archie breathes a loud, hefty sigh of relief as he bursts into his bedroom, where he knows Harry is waiting for him. The whole house has been redone in his absence, in celebration of Harry's Sorting, and it's at times like this that Archie _really_ misses Mum. Mum would never have let Dad redo the living room in silver and lime green! The room burns his eyes, and he doesn't even bother to hide his expression of horror when he sees it.

"I'm going to have to avoid this room," he tells his Dad, blinking owlishly in his guise as Harry Potter. "It's going to make my vision even worse."

Dad laughs at him and lets him bolt up the stairs to Harry without any further ado. His room has been redone too, in soothing green and black, and even if Archie had liked his old room better, he doesn't dislike the change.

He lectures Harry at length for her failure to keep in touch, and she apologizes in her own way, promising to do better, but Archie doesn't actually expect her to tell him anything until after the fact. In order to tell him when things are wrong, Harry would need to recognize when things are wrong _before_ whatever awful thing happened. Harry is so brilliant, so competent, that Archie has no doubt that at the time, at each and every moment where _he_ would have been raising alarm bells, she hadn't even recognized the danger. Harry likes to take care of things herself, and she's always telling him to do the same.

Harry tells him everything about Hogwarts. She tells him about Slytherin House, about her best friends, Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson. She tells him about her Housemates, about Theodore Nott and Blaise Zabini and Millicent Bulstrode and Adrian Pucey, Lucian Bole, Aldon Rosier, Edmund Rookwood, and about her friends in other Houses, Ronald Weasley, Neville Longbottom, the Weasley Twins. She describes the castle to him in intricate detail, more real to him than the Marauder's Map could be, and she tells him, in detail, about her idol Professor Snape. She tells him, with what Archie recognizes as her brand of glee, about the extra work she is doing for Professor Snape, about all her teachers. With a sigh, and with the disappearance of the small, bright smile she had worn talking about Potions, she also tells him about her problems with her magic, about her new wand, about being attacked by Lee Jordan.

Archie's heart goes out to her. School isn't a place where people should worry about being attacked, and he gives her a hug, reassures her that her magic is fine. Harry is the coolest, most collected, level-headed, fair, just, kind-hearted, hard-working and deserving person that he knows, and of course her magic won't hurt anyone unless they really deserve it. He's convinced of it, and he says so.

In return, he tells her all about AIM. He tells her all about his professors and his classes, about the wonderful things that he is learning, primarily first aid and trauma care right now. It's all so exciting, and he tells her that he can Heal bruises and scrapes and broken bones now. He describes the school to her, talks about the long, winding corridors, the warmth of the American South, about his tiny, single room in the Healer's dorms. He tells her about the clubs he didn't join, about the intramural Quidditch League he can't join because he would need to find six people willing to play. With Flint in mind, he mentions every relevant person he can think about, and he's a little surprised, almost, to realize how few people he _can_ talk about. He knows his classmates' names, but he doesn't know much else about them, and for a split second it seems to pale in comparison to all of Harry's friends, the dozens of people that she has come to know.

But it doesn't, because he has Hermione Granger, and he tells Harry all about his best friend Hermione, about how brilliant she is, about how kind and caring she is, about their study games where they try to one-up each other on their readings and quiz each other. He might not have made as many friends as Harry has but it's quality, not quantity that speaks, and he doesn't worry about it. Harry nods at his exuberant description of his best friend, obviously memorizing the information for herself, but she smiles, she asks questions, she is interested in what he says, in what he's done, in his first term abroad.

They don't have it good enough. Dinner is a trial – Archie has to kick Harry under the table to keep her from responding when Uncle Remus asks about Hogwarts, and he spins something in a panic about how grand the castle is, how many friends he's made, how interesting his classes are. It's a lie, not the first lie he's ever told, but somehow this one sticks a little in his throat, it feels weird, wrong. It's the first time he has been asked to give details about something he didn't do, and the words trip off his tongue, general platitudes that feel unrealistic, too vague. But it doesn't matter, because Uncle James immediately asks about the pranks he played, and Harry hasn't played _any_, and Archie is lost on how to respond before Harry comes to the rescue, inventing something about a tradition of pranking being in place now, that wasn't there when the Marauders started. Archie takes the excuse and runs with it, but the panic returns when Dad asks Harry to Heal a bruise, and he knows that Harry can't do it.

They end up spending nearly the whole of the winter break in the family libraries, studying. They find out that Harry is a Parselmouth, which is more than a little discomfiting, and Archie has a minor freak-out at how they'll deal with it, since _that's_ not something that can be taught. Only Harry can speak to snakes, and Archie hates to admit that he's actually a little frightened of the tiny, slithering, wriggling things now inhabiting his front garden. Harry just rolls her eyes, tells him he's overreacting, and promises not to speak to snakes in front of anyone. As long as no one finds out about her ability, everything will be fine.

Archie isn't wholly convinced. The ability to speak to snakes is seen as a Dark trait, and he has niggling worries about what might happen if it's found out, for whatever reason; what it might mean for the ruse, what it might mean for his Healing career. But Harry isn't worried, and he trusts Harry absolutely, so he lets it go.

The rest of the winter holiday is awkward, hard. He and Harry spend most of it catching up on what each other has covered in their classes. On one hand, most of the material is the same between the two schools; on the other, AIM is more theoretical in its approach while Hogwarts emphasizes practice, and Archie's Defense curriculum – well, it's best said that AIM has a Defense curriculum while Professor Quirrell seems to put the Hogwarts classes together willy-nilly. Harry also has a term of Healing to catch up on, and Archie needs to go through all her extra Potions work for the last term. Archie has so much less to read than she does, but truth be told, each of her Potions essays takes a while for him to process and digest. Harry is brilliant, and Archie isn't; as far as intelligence goes, Archie is clever enough, but he isn't an academic superstar like Harry. He, after all, couldn't do all of Marcus' fifth-year homework on top of his own studies.

As much time as he spends with Harry, he can't avoid Dad. He doesn't even want to – he loves Dad, and Dad is the only person in the world who really understands what it was to lose Mum. He and Dad, Dad and him, they are all they have left of their family, and he won't avoid Dad.

But his conversations with Dad are stilted, wrong. Not in a way that Dad picks up, Archie hopes, but Dad wants to hear about Hogwarts, he wants to hear all about Archie's new friends, and Archie very quickly runs out of things to say. He doesn't know Harry's new friends in the least, he can only give the general platitudes that Harry gave him, and he finds himself telling the same stories (the only ones he knows), over and over and over again. It's not real, it's not him, and laughing about the friends that aren't his, the pranks he didn't do, the things that hadn't happened to him, well…

Well, he supposes it's easier than telling Dad what he does at AIM. He studies at AIM. He has Hermione at AIM. He's thrown a couple pranks, but he has very few _stories_ the way that Harry has. If he thinks about it, he can talk about the two pranks he played, he can talk about Hermione, but that's really it. He enjoyed his term abroad, but there's so little he can tell Dad that Dad could relate to. It's easier to talk about the prank wars, about the things Harry has done, just because there's so much more that Dad can understand.

He doesn't like lying to Dad, but it's necessary. He and Harry are living a dangerous masquerade, and he never forgets.

XXX

Archie is happy to return to AIM, to Hermione and to his Healing studies. They're moving on to more complex trauma care this semester, complicated fractures and multi-faceted injuries, and he finds it all to be utterly fascinating. His Christmas present from Hermione is wonderful, a fantastic resource, and he shares it with her with no reservation. They're still one and two in their program, which is shrinking – there are two more dropouts from their program when they return to school, and one more in March, students unable to keep up with the workload.

The work _is _harder this term, and Archie has twice the studying to do to keep up with Harry's work at Hogwarts. He starts spending at least one day cooped up in his bedroom a week, catching up on what Harry has covered in her classes. Hogwarts goes for a more intuitive grasp of magic than AIM, and he has to practice the spells to make sure he can do them as fast and as intuitively as Harry is able to do them. Transfiguration is a challenge – Professor McGonagall, not covering many of the theoretical concepts that AIM does, drills practice and Hogwarts students are, from a practical perspective, more advanced than AIM students. All of this takes _time_ for him to study, and he tells Hermione, with a wink, that he's trying to steal her top spot in Transfiguration; she just rolls her eyes and says she has other things to do anyway.

Hermione is always there to lend a helping hand when he needs her, though. When Harry sends him a letter cautioning him that Professor Snape can read minds, he freaks out and asks Hermione to help him look it up. She's mildly curious about why he is asking but accepts his haphazard explanation that he's worried about his cousin's mental privacy at Hogwarts, and she helps him scour the expansive AIM libraries for everything on Legilimency.

She helps him, too, when Harry writes to him about the Sleeping Sickness, but for this, Archie feels so much more useless. He can research Legilimency and tell Harry something reassuring, about how it's not automatic and how Snape wouldn't be mind-reading her without reason, about how unethical it is for a Legilimens to read others' minds. He can't tell her anything so comforting about the Sickness. The whole thing is odd – no one outside of Britain has heard of it, and from an epidemiological standpoint, the illness pattern doesn't make any sense. His conclusions, with Hermione's help, are that the Sickness was _sent_ to Hogwarts for some unknown purpose, and his only advice to Harry is _don't get sick_. Not helpful, and he doesn't know what else he can do or say to make it better. He wishes there were more he could do.

News from Uncle James is no better. He hears something about a marriage law, where halfbloods will only be permitted to marry purebloods, but all Uncle James will tell him is that everything will be fine, that the law hasn't passed and that it will be heavily opposed, and that there will be contingency plans in case it does pass. He, frustrated, writes to Harry about it, but Harry doesn't seem to know much more; he, without hesitation, reminds Harry that she can always marry him. It would be weird, but he won't let Harry get passed off to some crusty old pureblood Lord.

Harry falls silent towards the end of term, and the letters, few as they were, stop. Archie frets – has she fallen ill? Has their cover been blown?

He reads the newspapers obsessively, especially the Daily Prophet, but to no avail. There's nothing about the Sickness in the papers, and Archie doesn't know what to do. He focuses on his Healing, on Hermione, but in the moments in between, when he has nothing else to occupy him, he thinks about Harry, and he worries.

XXX

He is eager to return to Britain for the holidays. He connects with Harry only a week or so before he's due to fly home, and it's a good thing he does because the exposé he reads in the Daily Prophet is a recipe for panic. Yes, it says that Harry is fine, and that Harry (or _Rigel_, rather) saved the day by curing the Sickness, and there is nothing suggesting the ruse has been blown, but he doesn't know what effect this had on Harry, and that's what he cares most about. He'll worry until he sees her. Archie is the only one in the world that knows that it is Harry Potter at Hogwarts, and _someone_ has to worry about her.

She's fine, and even if she's done some damage to Archie's relationship with Dad by not keeping him in the loop about the Sickness, she is apologetic about it, and Archie just hugs her and assures her it's fine. Archie will make something up, and Harry knows that she made a mistake that way, so it won't happen again. He apologizes profusely to Dad for the mistake, says he didn't know how bad it was while it was happening and he didn't want to worry him, especially when this is his first time away from home for so long and he knows Dad worried anyway. It doesn't ring true, but Dad still buys it, which is all that matters.

Dad asks Archie about the Marriage Law, asks with an apologetic expression in his grey eyes if Archie would mind being engaged to Harry, on paper only. It's for Harry's protection, and it's an offer Archie already made, so he agrees with no hesitation. They won't really marry, and six years is a long time. Surely, something will have changed by then. Dad's expression is a strange mix of relief and concern, but Archie doesn't understand the concern. He and Harry are already in so much trouble with the ruse, and what is one more thing? And Harry has so many disadvantages in life as a halfblood, and Archie will do whatever he can to smooth her way.

Dad has a pool party in the Black Family Potions Lab for his birthday. The spellwork in the lab is amazing, and Archie can't believe that this tropical paradise is now housed in his basement! Harry is less than impressed by the use of the Potions lab, but Archie loves it. The sun is shining, it's warm but not too warm, courtesy of a salty breeze blowing through the lab. There are rafts and pool noodles for their enjoyment, there are treasure chests at the bottom of the room that he knows Dad has hidden treats in for them all. It's wonderful, and he wishes Hermione could see it. Hermione would be so _impressed_ at the creative use of magic!

But he can't invite Hermione to his house. He can't invite anyone to his house, or to his birthday, because the ruse would be too obvious. That is, unfortunately, just how it is, so he smiles and resolves to tell her about it later.

This summer isn't like any summer he's ever had before. Every summer before, it was him and Harry, Harry and him, every day. She often went off to her lab to brew potions, but it was nothing like this summer. Being at Hogwarts, studying under Professor Snape, seems to have inflamed her passion for Potions even further – she spends at least half the day in the lab, now. Last summer, Archie could expect her to come by his house to hang out, to fly, to play Gobstones or Exploding Snap or help him prank Dad early every afternoon, but nowadays, she stays a few hours after dinner, or shows up an hour or so before dinner.

Archie doesn't blame her. She has a job in Diagon Alley this summer, which she's using to raise money for an apartment, key for their fallback plan. Archie tries to think of other ways of making money to help her, but he can't think of anything that wouldn't be noticed. Pranking is a family business, and Dad would find out; Healers only work through St. Mungo's or another hospital, and no one would take him, a twelve-year-old with no discernable Healing experience, on for that. Instead, he offers to help with her potions, chopping ingredients and things, but she brushes him off – she _enjoys_ making potions, it isn't _work_ for her, and he isn't that advanced in his Potion-making anyway.

On top of that, Harry is enrolled in owl correspondence school, and she seems to have a billion essays to write. She holes up in the Potter Library most days for at least a few hours, scribbling something out on charmed parchment. Archie offers to help with that, too, thinking maybe he can pound out a few essays for her at least, but she shakes her head. It'll be too obvious if they compare our writing and our writing styles, she says, and the parchment is charmed to prevent any alterations. It's no more work for her to write the essay than it is for her to copy out one that Archie wrote, and since this could very well be the educational history she will need to rely on later, Archie lets it go.

It's all he can do to help her carry her crates into Diagon Alley, a couple times a week. But even that, Harry meets someone in the Alleys who meets her every day to help her. He's a little bothered by it, but he doesn't know why – it's not like Archie particularly _enjoys_ physical labour, and even when he goes, it's not as if it's interesting or exciting at all. He just helps carry the crates in, puts them on a high, somewhat sticky counter, helps Harry put her crates up too, then picks up more crates to carry home. Harry loves to seclude herself in her Potions lab afterwards, lost in her own world and humming cheerfully as she chops ingredients, so Archie always ends up just going home.

Later in the summer, she does ask him for help with a proposed blending potion or spell to merge their appearances, so they keep on looking alike. Archie dives into complex bio-magic for her, researching how magic and DNA combine and work, long afternoons spent holed up in the library reading. It makes him feel useful, so he spends much longer on it than he has to, goes into much more detail than Harry needs. It isn't as if he has much else to do, and there are long days where he isn't sure what he's done.

He tries to catch up with Dad. Dad still wants to hear a lot about Hogwarts, so Archie has to be careful about what he says, and it's weird lying to Dad. He doesn't like it, even if it's necessary, so he tries to avoid talking too much about Hogwarts. He says something vague about how the last few months were rough, about how he doesn't really want to talk about it, and Dad, with a sympathetic look that Archie doesn't deserve, cuts down on the questions.

Instead, they talk about other things: they talk about their family, they talk about Quidditch rankings, they talk about the Marauder pranking business. Archie makes up for a year of comparatively few pranks by experimenting with a new one every few days. His best ideas are refined, turned into tricks for the product line, and he follows Dad to Zonko's every time he goes. A lot of the minutiae of the business are dull to him, but seeing what their competitors are doing is interesting, and truth be told he has little else to do anyway.

Despite his efforts, there is a distance between him and Dad now that he can't help but feel. They can still connect on some things, like Mum, like pranks, but Archie is hiding something so big from his Dad that it's always there, a hulking presence in his mind. It comes up at the oddest of times; Dad reminisces about a prank he and Uncle James did at Hogwarts, asks if the marks are still there, and Archie doesn't know how to answer. Dad makes a comparison to a professor that Archie has never met, and Archie laughs and agrees because he has never taken classes with them. Dad says something about House Quidditch teams, asks about the games, and with a slight pang, Archie realizes that he hasn't seen a Quidditch game in over a year. The big game at AIM is Quodpot, which he has no comprehension of whatsoever, so he and Hermione don't go to the games.

Home becomes a strange place. He loves being at home – he loves being with Harry, with Dad. But it also becomes a thorny place, an uncomfortable place, and he can't quite put his finger on it. He doesn't fit anymore, and there's a sense that things are changing, but every time he sits down to try and puzzle it out, he gets nowhere.

XXX

This year, Archie decides when he touches down at AIM, will be different. Not too different, because he is still at AIM first and foremost for Healing, but he's going to try to go out for Quidditch, like Dad and Uncle James both want him and Harry to do. Life is more than studying, Dad and his summer at home reminds him, and a dose of Quidditch is just what he needs. He misses Quidditch; he misses watching Quidditch, playing Quidditch, and he soon hears from Harry that she's made the Slytherin Quidditch Team as a Beater. Archie prefers playing Chaser, but he'll play any position if it means being able to get out and fly regularly.

Unfortunately, Hermione has no interest in it.

"Quidditch?" she frowns when he asks. "Harry, I'm not good at flying, and from all you've said, the game sounds rather violent…"

"It's just an intramural league, Hermione!" Archie replies eagerly, leaning forward in his excitement. "You don't have to be good to play, and it's not that violent, the Bludgers have never really hurt anyone. I mean, there are broken bones and things, sure, but we can Heal those now!"

She throws him an even more skeptical look. "Sorry, Harry – I've never been athletic, and I just don't think it's for me. How about you ask some of our other classmates?"

Archie sighs, but he would have to ask other people anyway, so he leaves Hermione for later. If he can get at least _five_ other people, he thinks he might be able to convince Hermione to put herself down just so they can play.

The problem is, teams form faster than he thought possible. The intramural season doesn't start until mid-October, with teams were to be put in by the end of September, but two weeks in, it seems like everyone who wants to play is already on a team.

"Sorry," Thomas Graves says, after Archie stops him after Basic Healing. "I like Quidditch, sure, but I'm not really a player."

"Not even for fun?" Archie wheedles. He doesn't know Graves that well, they've only had a few conversations here and there over the last year, but he's overheard Graves talking about Quidditch a few times with his small group of friends. He and Graves have always gotten along. "It's not serious, the intramural league."

Graves laughs, shaking his head, but his expression isn't unkind. "That's sort of the definition of intramural, Potter. I also managed to snag an editor position with the school paper this year, and I don't really have the time. Good luck, though."

He tries Sally Hopkins next, also in Healing, whom he's always thought of as an athletic sort of person. He sees her outside a lot, and he thinks he's seen her playing a Muggle game on the grounds at least once last year. Something with a flat disc that soars through the air, that she dives to catch, that she then she sends to flying to someone else.

She seems puzzled when he stops her. "You're asking if I want to… what, sorry?"

"Join an intramural Quidditch team with me," Archie repeats, with a wide, ingratiating grin. "It's a ton of fun, and we'll get to be outside flying, and it'll be great!"

"Uh…" she says, frowning. "I'm not from a magical family, so I don't really know much about Quidditch. And I don't have a broom?"

"You can learn!" Archie takes a step forward in excitement. "And I'm sure there are school brooms you can borrow. It's a great game, I can teach you all about it, and you'll love it, I swear."

She takes a step back. "Uh, I'm sure it's a great game and all, but sorry – I mean, I might try if you just need one more or something, but I'm not really interested. Why don't you try John Kowalski? He plays just about everything."

Archie's face falls. "Are you sure? About playing, I mean."

"Yeah," Hopkins replies, nodding. "Try John. Even if he's already been snapped up by a different team, he might know of a space someone else might have – he knows a lot of people."

Archie sighs, thanks her, and goes off on a hunt for Kowalski. It isn't that he and Kowalski _don't_ get along, but of the entire Healing track, Kowalski is probably the person he gets along with the least. Archie has never forgotten their conversation in first year, and he suspects that Kowalski hasn't either. Hermione doesn't have a very high opinion of either Kowalski or his friends; she finds them distracting, too loud, not serious enough about their studies, and a part of Archie agrees.

"They aren't even _in_ the Healing track!" she hisses, slamming her book shut on a day when Kowalski and his friends are playing a very loud Muggle game of some kind. Something involving property that Hermione calls _Monopoly_, and Lam, with a decidedly predatory smirk, is sweeping the board while the rest of them groan. "Why are they hanging out here_? _Why can't they go somewhere else?"

"Maybe the other common rooms were crowded," Archie mutters in reply, watching them. "And it's not like there are any rules, for silence in the common room, right?"

"We're in a serious program, Harry, and we have a test in two days." Hermione purses her lips. "I can't concentrate. I'm going to my room."

Archie sighs, packing his books too. If she's going to her room, he may as well do the same.

Another part of Archie thinks that Kowalski and his friends are probably much like how Dad and the Marauders must have been at school. Every now and then, when Hermione has given up on studying in the Healer's common room, Archie stays, lingering over his books in a corner, watching them. He doesn't like to admit it, but sometimes, in rare moments, he wishes he could join them. They might be loud, but they're always laughing, and there's always something happening around them.

He can't, though. He's at AIM for Healing, and Kowalski and his friends are the very definition of distraction. He can't be like them, sneaking out to the movies every few weeks, struggling through his classes with middling grades; what would Harry think? Harry is taking so many risks so that he can have this opportunity, and he owes it to her, to her and to Mum, to become the very best Healer he can be. He's not going to get there with distractions, especially not when he has Harry's curriculum at Hogwarts and her extra Potions work to follow along with too. And what would Hermione say, if he started hanging out with them? It would drive a wedge between them, and Hermione is his best friend in the world. He can't imagine not being close with Hermione.

And he always has to think about Harry, about the ruse, too. It's such a loud crowd, such an exciting crowd; what if he let something slip? What if something got back home to Britain? He would never forgive himself if something happened to Harry because of something he had done, just for fun.

There are so many reasons _not _to approach Kowalski and his friends. But it's just _intramural Quidditch_, and Archie wants a chance to fly, and as Hopkins says, Kowalski plays just about everything. If anyone in Healing is likely to know of any openings in an intramural Quidditch team, it is him.

"Kowalski," he calls out, running to catch up with the bulky boy as they leave their Defense class. "Hey, can we talk?"

"Sure, if it's on the way to Duelling Club," Kowalski replies, not slowing down as he heads out to the main school grounds. "What's up?"

"Intramural Quidditch," Archie pants. Quidditch and flying are really the only forms of physical exercise that Archie gets, and Kowalski sets a quick pace. "I was wondering if you wanted to play? Or if you know anyone else who wants to play?"

"Aw, sorry, man," Kowalski replies, shaking his head in what almost seems like genuine regret. "You should have asked earlier; I joined another team a few days ago. But there's a list out by the pitch of people who still want to play and haven't found teams, for them to try to connect with each other – you should go put your name down, there. I can also put out some feelers for you, if you want, but I think everyone I know who wants to play is already on a team."

"Oh," Archie says, a little lost for words. "I mean, if you wouldn't mind."

"It's no trouble." Kowalski flashes him a quick smile. "Good luck finding a team – hopefully I'll see you on the pitch!"

Archie thanks him and heads off to the Quidditch and Quodpot pitch to find the list and, hopefully, a team that will have him. But the list that he finds there mostly has names crossed off_ – _it seems like even the people who didn't have teams before starting to group up, and Archie was late to the game. He sees only a few names that aren't crossed off yet, sprinkled through the list, but he doesn't recognize any of them. He takes a note of them, then adds his name to the bottom.

He spends the next week trying to track down students he doesn't know, trying to form a team of people who are interested. It's hard even tracking them down – AIM is such a big school, and he just doesn't know enough people to even know where to begin looking. He only manages to track down a few of the people that were on the list, and by the time he finds them, they've already been snapped up. In the end, the deadline for intramural Quidditch teams comes and goes, and Archie hasn't managed to find a team for himself at all.

He goes out flying by himself. Flying is fun, but it's just not the same without a game, without friends to join him. He races around the pitch, climbing into the air and diving to the ground, but it's lonely, almost a little sad, flying by himself late at night on the pitch. He misses Harry a lot, in these moments, and knowing that she's playing Quidditch for her House team fills him with a sense of longing, a sense of jealousy, almost.

But that's not her fault, that he couldn't get a team together. She earned her place on the Slytherin Quidditch Team through open tryouts, and maybe if he was at Hogwarts he would fly even less. His feelings about it are complex, thorny, and he soon stops going out to fly by himself. The year picks up, so do his studies (and Harry's), so while he misses Quidditch, at least he still has Healing, and he still has Hermione, and that has to be enough.

He hears from Harry, on and off – he knows she's writing to Dad this year, because she's sending him a copy of her letters, but her own comments about Hogwarts are terse, limited. It's not that she's trying to hide anything from him, he knows, it's just that Harry has never been a particularly good correspondent. She always thinks that she can take care of things herself, and it's far too late when she does tell anyone anything. Still, it's frustrating, especially when she mentions an attack at Halloween and another one in November. She doesn't give him much by way of details; he knows that the students have been Petrified, which sends him and Hermione on a worried research jaunt on what, exactly, that means, but that's about it. He sends Harry letter after letter, checking on her, asking her to stay safe, but there isn't really anything else he can do.

He feels useless. He'll feel better, he thinks, once he gets home and he can check on her in person.

XXX

He wrecks it the minute he bursts into his bedroom. It's his fault – Uncle James, the entire way home, asked him a thousand questions about his _independent potions studies_, and he had no idea how to respond. He had followed Harry's work to some extent, but he would never have the facility with it that Harry had. Between his own worry and the questions, he is all too eager to resume his identity and leave it for Harry to deal with, so he says more than a few unwise things. Harry has always been sensitive about her dad's treatment of her passion, and Archie knew that – it is his fault, and even if his unspoken apology is accepted, there's something a little off about the rest of their conversation that night, and they don't manage to cover more than the main points of each of their semesters. It's enough that they can carry off the evening, as long as they are together. They can catch up in more detail tomorrow morning.

But when he wakes up the next day, she's gone.

When she doesn't show up within an hour of him waking up, he goes to look for her. He's blown through everything he knows about her term at Hogwarts over breakfast with Dad, and he doesn't have anything else to say until he meets with her and gets an in-depth explanation of everything she's done at Hogwarts. Dad is asking him too many questions about his term at Hogwarts, and he doesn't know how to answer those any better than he knows how to answer Potions questions from Uncle James.

He Floos over to Potter Place. Both Aunt Lily and Uncle James are at work, and he doesn't see Harry in the kitchen, or the common areas. That isn't surprising – Harry has always been a bit of a loner, so he never really expects to find her there. He pokes his head into her bedroom, and he knows that she's gotten up because her sheets are mussed, but she's not in her room. He checks her potions lab and the library, but she's not there either.

She's never just _forgotten_ Archie. What they have between them, with the ruse, it's dangerous but it's also special, a unique connection between the two of them. It's important. They _need_ to debrief; the little they talked last night wasn't good enough, and Harry knows that. She has to know that! Without a complete debrief, Archie doesn't know how to handle Dad, or their other family members, what to say if they ever ask him about school when Harry isn't there. Harry would never just leave, go off and do something else without doing a full debrief with him.

He waits, and he waits. And he waits. An hour in, he starts worrying – not that anything has happened to her, for once, but she's _not_ there, she _hasn't_ come to debrief with him, and he doesn't know why. This is completely different, this is new, and he doesn't understand. Harry has never forgotten Archie before, she's never left him behind. She's always been there, an indomitable presence, always there for him as he is for her. She would never miss something as critically important as the debrief, and yet – and yet she's not there.

Is she mad at him? Was his unspoken apology, for his thoughtless comments about potions last night, was it not enough? She had _said_ it was fine. Or was it something over dinner? Did he not argue enough with Dad and with Uncle James when they started talking about her friends' parents? Or was it something else? Has he done something to upset her, without realizing it?

He fiddles with his hands, with his shirt, his legs are getting an odd tingling feeling, and he feels a nervous bubble expanding in his chest. What if he has upset her? How can he fix it, if he did? Why isn't she there, why is she skipping their critical debrief? There has to be something. It has to be something he did, and he worries, he frets, he panics. He's shaking, a little, and he grabs a couch cushion, hugging it close to his body. He shouldn't feel so upset. Maybe she just forgot.

But Harry would _never_ forget anything as important as Archie.

Two hours in, he gives up and goes home. He feels pathetic, sitting there alone in the Potter Place sitting room, waiting for Harry when he has no idea where she's gone, when she might return. All he's doing is sitting there worrying, fretting, feeling lost. He should go home, and he can try to find her later, try to find out what he did wrong. Dad will be at volunteering by now anyway, and at least he'll be in the comfort of his own room while he worries.

That night, though, it seems like Archie hasn't done _anything_ wrong. Harry went to Diagon Alley, and she is genuinely happy, talking about meeting her friends in the Alleys, so Archie tries not to feel like he's been left behind or, worse, replaced. Maybe their debrief wasn't as important as he thought it was, and Harry has a life outside of Archie, she has a life other than as _Rigel Black_, and that is a good thing. Their relationship is still the same, isn't it? They have a sleepover that very night, and she asks him for help researching the creatures that might be causing the petrifactions at Hogwarts, and it's just like it has always been. She's still Harry, and he's still Archie, and they're still cousins, best friends, siblings, co-conspirators, everything rolled into one.

A week later, Archie is sitting in Harry's bedroom, masquerading as her as she goes to the SOW Party Gala as him. He leans back, in her bed – he has a book, one of Harry's advanced Potions books, but he can't concentrate on the words. It's strange, isn't it, that Archie isn't even himself in Wizarding Britain? Publicly, the _Arcturus Rigel Black_ that exists is Harry, and it isn't him. It's not that he particularly wants to go to the Gala, he wouldn't know anyone there other than Dad anyway, but it's weird, there's an uncomfortable itch against his skin that he doesn't like. He's not Harry, but he's not _Rigel Black_ either. Who is he?

He tries to ignore the niggling sense that things are changing, that things _have_ changed, and that he's slowly but surely being left behind.

XXX

Archie feels like a bouncing ball being thrown, topsy-turvy, between two separate worlds, and neither of them are truly _happy_ ones. It's not that he's _unhappy_, or so he thinks; he's content. He's fine. He has nothing to be unhappy about.

At home, in Britain, he has Dad. He has Harry. He has his family, and his family is brilliant. He plays a ton of pranks over the holidays, and his family loves him unconditionally, and Harry is there. But home is also an uncomfortable place, a different place – he and Harry are hiding so many things, now, from their families. Dad is always there for him, Dad loves him, but there is a disconnect there now, and Archie sometimes just doesn't know what to say to him. He doesn't know how to relate, so he fills the air with chatter, with cheerful, fun talk about food, about Quidditch rankings and Marauder products, to camouflage the absolute nothing he has to say about his life. And Harry, well, Harry has two lives in Britain now, one as herself in Diagon Alley and another one as _Rigel Black_, Slytherin potions prodigy, best friend of Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson. These are things that she doesn't share with Archie, even if she tells him about them, and while he doesn't blame her for it, it's hard realizing how little of a life _Archie_ has in Britain. He's always happy to return to school.

But school is no easier. School isn't a bad place, but it's not what he expected. If you had gone and asked Archie three years ago what he thought school would be like, he would have said instantly that it would be like Dad and the Marauders; he would be in the middle of a group of friends, and they would all work hard, but there would also be so much laughter, so much fun. He would have a thousand and one stories about his life, a million happy memories to look back on when he was older. Instead, he doesn't have that.

He doesn't _not_ have that, either. He has Hermione, and Hermione is wonderful, there is no one in the world like Hermione. He's sure that, decades into the future, no matter what happens, Hermione will still be beside him. No one else understands Archie's passion for Healing the way that Hermione does, not even Harry or Dad. Archie _loves_ Healing, he wants to know everything he can about Healing – it is beyond passion, on some level it is simply _obsession_. Hermione doesn't mind Archie's obsessive studying tendencies when it comes to Healing, she understands when Archie goes off on research jaunts because she does it too, and Archie can't imagine a better friend.

But there's also something missing. Hermione doesn't understand Quidditch, for one, and she has no interest in the game, either watching or playing. Indeed, she seems to find the concept of Quidditch to be overly dangerous and is almost slightly disapproving of the whole thing. And as for pranks, well, Hermione will go along with Archie's pranks, few as they are at school, but she isn't a prankster by nature. She seems to find playing pranks more _stressful_ than _fun_.

Sometimes, when Hermione is busy, Archie sits in the common room, or the dining hall, and he watches the other students. There is noise, there is life, there is laughter – other students talk about going to town, seeing movies, about books they've read that Archie hasn't heard of, about the intramural Quodpot and Quidditch rankings. He picks up the school paper every week, reads about everything that is happening at school.

The Student Council, yet again, is arguing with the administration about the price of the student shuttle that takes kids to town, as well as defending the critical forty-eight-hour rule on exams. Archie has never taken the student shuttle into town, since weekends are reserved for catching up on Harry's work, but the cost has apparently been an issue for a while – the school argues that, with the increase in costs, the fee has to go up, while the Student Council says that if fees go up, fewer students will be able to take it. Archie doesn't really have an opinion on the school shuttle, but he does care about the forty-eight-hour rule, which prevents the school from setting more than two final exams within forty-eight hours. He can't imagine the stress of having to do more than two finals in two days!

Archie follows the rankings for the several intramural athletic leagues running through AIM right now; there's Quidditch and Quodpot, but there's also duelling, there are small leagues for Muggle sports that Archie doesn't know anything about. The Quidditch team that Kowalski is on, the Blue Devils (mainly but not exclusively Healers) are tearing a streak through the league, ranked first, and Archie wishes he could play.

He reads about the other clubs, the other things happening at school. The drama club is getting ready to open their annual production, a play called _To Kill a Mockingbird_, the dance club is putting on a showcase, and the school band and school orchestra are having their annual concerts together this year, much to both clubs' displeasure. One of the general education students, Eugenia Watson, is apparently ripping up the international wizarding chess scene, and at the age of sixteen already has an Elo rating of 2240, which Archie doesn't understand but gathers means that she's expected to go professional. Two of the seventh-year Charms Mastery students have jointly published a paper in the International Journal of Experimental Charms, something involving increasing efficiencies for amplification and attenuation charms.

There are a million and one things happening at AIM, but Archie isn't part of any of it.

Archie's life, the way he sees it, comes down to the three Hs: Harry, Healing, and Hermione. He has Harry, who knows everything about him and loves him unconditionally, who shares everything with him and only him so long as he remembers to ask. He has Healing, in his dream program, where he's already studying so many advanced things that he wouldn't be close to studying at home, and he can feel his dreams of being a Healer coming true in every class he takes. And he has Hermione, his comrade-in-arms, at his side most of the time at school, his best friend, his ally, his co-Healer-in-Training. He is so lucky to have these things, and how can he possibly ask for more?

More than that, he knows from Harry that life at Hogwarts is no piece of cake, either. The attacks continue – a Hufflepuff prefect is Petrified first, then the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor that Harry hated, then another student. Hogwarts is effectively on lockdown, and Harry is upset that her lab has been closed and locked, and the entire school finds out that she (or, Archie supposes, _he_) is a Parselmouth. He isn't happy about that, but he can do less than nothing about it, and they'll have to figure it out what to do about that over the summer.

He is reminded, again, what a dangerous game they're playing when one of Harry's friends comes to AIM. It is one Marek Swiftknife who meets him on AIM grounds, and Archie has no idea who he is, and he has to think very quickly to match it up with what Harry has told him about her life in Diagon Alley. His gambled guess is a success, much to his relief, and he sends Swift on his way post-haste, but it is _such_ a close call and he knows that Harry feels it too.

Harry, too, also has a touch-and-go moment, something about a game in Defense Against the Dark Arts going terribly wrong. Archie isn't sure _what _goes terribly wrong, because it sounds to him like Harry shielded herself when it didn't look like Draco was going to manage to shield her in time, and he thinks Draco is being overly sensitive about the whole thing. But what Archie thinks isn't important; Harry deems it appropriate to tell Draco that she has some sort of embarrassing _physical condition_ which made her overreact. Archie, as the person who now has an embarrassing physical condition, can't say that he likes the line at all, but it is what it is. If it's for Harry's safety, he would take on a lot worse. He lets it go.

Life is easy for Archie, and he knows it. He has Harry, he has Hermione, and he has Healing. By April, he even has a new cousin, Addy, whom he just knows he is going to adore. It is only by a failure in his own psyche, in his own character, that he isn't happy. He is a Black, and it is the first time he wonders, he worries, if the famed Black madness has found a home in him.

It can't have. It can't have, and so long as he can recognize how wrong his feelings are, so long as he can deny them and tell himself what he _should _be feeling, he isn't mad. He gets up from his spot in the corner, folds the school newspaper, and drops it in a wastebasket on the way to his room, throwing away his loneliness, his sense of being left out, and his haunting worry and fear that he's being left behind, with it.

XXX

He is always happy to return to Britain, but it's a short-lived happiness. Harry tells him all about the end of her year, a horrifying tale that makes Archie simultaneously happy that he _isn't_ the one at Hogwarts but also outrageously guilty because he _should have been_ the one at Hogwarts. Harry had suffered so much; she had almost tried to kill herself, for heaven's sake, and all Archie can do is hug her and be there for her while she gets the whole awful story all out. She has to share with someone, because while Archie knows Dad will be checking on him all summer, no one will be checking on her. Archie is the only one that she can share everything with, and he feels the weight of welcome responsibility settling on him. That's his job, he realizes, to be there for Harry when no one else can.

It's a responsibility that is always there, but Harry doesn't reach for him as often as he wishes she would. Not that he really expects her to – Harry is someone who likes to work things out on her own, and he knows that. It is enough for her to unload it all on him once, and then she moves on. He keeps an eye on her, as best as he can, but for the rest of summer Harry all but disappears.

That's not true, he corrects himself sharply. That's his madness talking, the haunting madness always around the corner of his thoughts. Harry is just busy. It's not just her job in the Alleys and her owl correspondence school now – she's been working out with Uncle Remus since the end of last summer, and she has her Guild internship now. It's a huge opportunity for her, and he can't begrudge her any of it.

But he's at more loose ends than he has ever been before. Even last summer, she would come by and see him, hang out with him for a little while every day, maybe an hour before dinner or after dinner, but it was something. And last year, he had Dad too – Dad was always there, always ready to talk or play a game with him or even just sit and read with him. This year, Dad is often preoccupied with Addy, who is left at Grimmauld Place while Aunt Lily and Uncle James go back to work. He doesn't blame Dad, and he loves Addy, and the simple fact is that she requires more attention than Archie does. Archie spends _days_ mostly by himself, while Dad is occupied with Addy, while Harry is away at her internship or working in her lab or studying in the library, long days soaking in silence, in his own thoughts.

He doesn't blame anyone for being busy. They all have lives here in Britain, and he doesn't. At home, he doesn't have Hermione, and no one lets a thirteen-year-old have a Healing internship, especially when he isn't even formally in a Healing program. He tries to read, and he goes book-shopping not infrequently, but reading about Healing isn't the same thing as _studying it_ at AIM with Hermione by his side, it isn't the same as _practicing _it when other students get into trouble. He doesn't feel his dreams at his fingertips at home, and it's just not the same.

He still sees Dad and Harry, of course he does. He gets his Dad back in the evenings, he has Dad on all weekends, and he sees Harry every night at dinner and they talk for fifteen minutes here, five minutes there, a whole two hours on a Saturday. He helps her get ready for the Malfoy Summer Party, a whole night where he gets to help Harry brew the Potentialis Potion, fix her hair and send her off in his best dress robes, and he gets an afternoon, a month later, for flying and offbeat experimenting where she dyes his hair blue. Each and every one of these moments is precious to him – if anything, Archie is happier, more upbeat, more excited during these moments than he would normally be, because he wants to enjoy himself, he wants Harry and Dad to enjoy being with him, he wants to be _not alone_.

These moments, with Dad when Dad isn't tired from caring for an adorable and wonderful yet exhausting infant, with Harry when she's found some time to spend with him, these moments became his sparks in the darkness. He feels alive in these moments, he feels like _himself_ again, when the haunting madness, the thoughts and feelings that he doesn't want to have disappear and he feels like the cheerful and buoyant Archie Black that he knew once existed and which seems to have faded away over time. It's in these moments, too, that Archie remembers what it was all for – the ruse was so that Harry could live the life she always wanted, to make her dreams come true just as Archie's dreams are coming true at AIM. She has her internship, now, and she is happy, and Archie has his Healing program and is becoming a Healer.

But when they're not there, when Harry is busy and Dad is busy and he's alone, things are different. When he is alone, he feels like nothing, and Grimmauld Place, without Harry, with Dad so preoccupied with Addy or away at volunteering, becomes a grim and lonely place. He haunts the Black library, haphazardly paging through journals he has read a dozen times before, trying and failing to distract himself, or sometimes he just lies in bed in his room, staring at the ceiling, wishing time would just flow away from him and he would wake up and weeks will have passed. He sleeps a lot – far more than necessary, far more than he ever has before. He gets up around seven in the morning, as he always has, but he always returns to bed around eleven, purportedly with a book, and sometimes, if he's lucky, he sleeps through until three or four in the afternoon. He is awake for a few hours in the evening, then he makes his excuses around maybe nine, ten at night, and he's back to bed. Sleeping is nice – sleeping feels good, and he doesn't notice the loneliness when he's sleeping. His sleep isn't restful, but it is oblivion.

Archie feels like he is begging for the scraps, the tiny shards of attention that he gets from his family. Dad is tired, and his face is lined, and he has a glass of Firewhiskey in hand, so Archie knows that he's thinking about Mum and about the brother or sister Archie could have had; should he interrupt him? Should he ask Dad if he wants to talk, even if it's just about Quidditch or Marauder products? Should he see if Dad wants to play a game of Gobstones or Exploding Snap? But Dad doesn't look like he's up to it, and it's always a risk, talking to Dad when Archie didn't go to Hogwarts, when he has so little to say about his life, so Archie leaves him alone.

And Harry is so busy. She has her internship all day, every day, she's waking up early to brew for her job or brewing late in the evenings, and somehow, she's still getting her owl-school work done and working out with Uncle Remus. Archie wishes he could help, and he has offered help before, but Harry has always refused, always just taken care of it. There is nothing that Archie can do, so maybe it's just better that he stays out of her way.

He tries interrupting her once, one day a few weeks before their birthdays, asking her to come shopping with him for their joint birthdays. She comes, but she groans most of the way, obviously annoyed at being pulled away from her experiments, and Archie feels like such a child, needing attention, that he doesn't do it again.

Archie feels clunky, an object in the way, guilty for even wanting to take more time from her, from Dad, from the things that are important. Caring for Addy is important, the things that Harry does are important, both to make her dreams come true and to protect the ruse, and he _reminds_ himself of that, day in and day out. Archie is thirteen years old, he isn't a child, he doesn't _need_ attention the way an infant does and he's smart enough to know that everything Harry does is necessary.

He still wishes he could skip most of the days and live only in the fifteen minutes, the five minutes, the few hours that his family can spare for him. He has nothing outside that, and it's only then that he feels alive.

XXX

The summer feels too long, and Archie hops on the plane back to AIM without any real feelings whatsoever. This is the madness talking, of course it is – he should be delighted to see Hermione, happy to be returning to school and to his Healing program, excited for a new year with new classes. Instead, he just feels a sort of blasé nothingness, which he chalks it up to the tail end of summer. He has been feeling like that for most of the summer, truth be told, and he's sure that it will go away once he settles in at AIM. Once he has Hermione and Healing classes to distract him, he'll cheer up, and maybe this year he'll manage to put together a Quidditch team to play. Dad got him a _Firebolt_, and what team wouldn't like that on their side?

But it is not to be. Harry slips him a Potentialis Potion, made just for him, the night before they leave for school, and he takes it in his room that very first night.

The potion gives him a weird swelling sensation, sitting strangely in in his stomach before it bleeds into his core. He blinks once, and his magic is flooding the air, symbols appearing in blue mist around him. He grabs a sheet of parchment and a quill, scribbling them all down for him to look up later, because he doesn't remember what they all mean off the top of his head. That part he expects, and Harry has even lent him the book he needs to interpret all the symbols, the one that she pulled the recipe out of in the first place.

He doesn't expect the slight _pop _as the magic fades away, dissipating in the air like so much smoke. A pop is unusual, and it's only by chance that he catches a look of himself in his mirror above his dresser and realizes that he is no longer _Harry Potter_.

He stares at himself, noting barely for an instant his wide, grey eyes, his pale expression of open-mouthed horror. He isn't Harry Potter, and he isn't himself, this isn't anyone he recognizes. The face in the mirror looks like Dad, like the faces of the Black Lords whose portraits line the walls of Grimmauld Place. It's him – it's his true face, and Archie isn't sure he likes it. He's pretty sure he doesn't like it. He doesn't look like himself at all.

More importantly, he doesn't look like _Harry_. A million wild, panicked thoughts run through his head: this can't be happening. This is something that absolutely cannot happen, because he cannot go out at AIM without being _Harry Potter_, because it would destroy the ruse, and then Harry would be in danger. How can this have happened? Harry would never have given him the potion if it was going to destabilize his Polyjuice. What had even happened? He can't look like this, he needs to look like _Harry Potter._

He dives for his trunk, opening it and searching for the recipe book, which has the guide to the interpretation of results on the following pages. There has to be an answer in the symbols, something in his books to help him fix it, help him turn him back into himself. This isn't normal, and he runs his fingers down the chart of symbols, picking out signs almost carelessly, searching for an answer.

None of it makes any sense. Archie matches his symbols to the ones in the book, and none of it makes any sense whatsoever. Archie is Dark by magic, he doesn't have the Light magic that most upper-level Healing spells need. His strengths are supposed to be Transfiguration and Defense, and he has a particular gift for cursing. His core is strong, slightly above average, but his recommended careers are all wrong – the book recommends becoming an Auror, a Curse-breaker, careers where he has to hurt people or defend himself. He looks fruitlessly for the signs denoting Healing, or even just Charms, that field on which so much of Healing is based, and those symbols are nowhere close to the ones he has written on his parchment.

Ten minutes later, there is only one symbol on his list that he hasn't identified, and he is well into the addenda before he finds it. This symbol doesn't fix the rest – it doesn't tell him that can Heal, that he will be a gifted Healer, that his destiny is his to make. It tells him only that he is a Metamorphmagus.

A Metamorphmagus. And the pieces click into place, as Archie grabs his sheet of parchment and looks at it with new, troubled eyes.

Arcturus Rigel Black is a Black, and he is the Black Heir. His magic is Black, and the list reads to him as the main markers of everything the Blacks are famous for: strong witches and wizards, Dark, declared Dark as long as anyone can remember. Not Healers but killers, known throughout history for their powerful curses and hexes. Metamorphmagi run through the Black line, the skill blending easily into their family legacy as warriors, spies, murderers.

He's even a little mad, he thinks. Arcturus Rigel Black is a Black, a Dark wizard, and he is mad.

He shakes the feeling off – he's not mad as long as he knows what he's supposed to feel, even if it's not what he actually feels. Metamorphmagic is just a gift, he tells himself sternly, sharply, coldly. Just a gift, and possibly the only gift he can possibly use to save both himself and Harry from their current predicament, being that Archie doesn't look like himself. Just a gift, a _useful_ gift that can solve their problems right now, and he shuts his eyes and focuses on what he _should_ look like.

There's a small pop, and Archie looks like himself again, and he breathes a sigh of relief. The minute he relaxes, the shape flickers, his nose slips, and Archie has to focus to keep his face, Harry Potter's face, from disappearing underneath that unknown, horrifying, Black mask.

It takes him only a day to learn how to control his transformations, but long weeks to train himself how to _keep_ his transformation without explicitly focusing on it, months to train himself hold it in his sleep. Those first weeks are nerve-wracking – the slightest surprise, discomfort, is enough to make his shape waver, and he gets used to quickly looking down, or away, from Hermione when it happens. He can't try for Quidditch, not with his new gift causing problems, because the minute _anything _happened in the air, his disguise would drop. It's just impossible, and even when Kowalski approaches him asking if he'd like to play with the Blue Devils that year, they have a spot open for a Chaser, he has no choice but to say no.

Instead, Archie worries. It's not that he doesn't like being a Metamorphmagus – the gift is, in the right light, kind of cool – it's just that he wishes it didn't come with everything else about his Potentialis results. Archie is a Black, and his magic is Black magic, and now, in odd moments when he's studying, when he's struggling with his gift, when he's sitting in his room working through his Transfiguration or Defense homework, he ponders fate.

His magic doesn't lie. He is a Black, and he might be a little mad, and he is good at all things destructive. He aces a Transfiguration or Defense test, and he questions what that means for his future. He has a hard time casting a spell in Healing, and he wonders whether this is just the start of his slow and inevitable decline. He can memorize all the books about Healing he can, but if his magic isn't _compatible_, how far can he possibly go? Can he still become a Healer, even with Dark magic, even with his family's strengths being what they are? Or is this moment, is this year the height of his abilities, will this be the year where his magic will let him go no farther?

He tries to find comfort in the journals of the old Black Healers, the ones that came before him. There have been Blacks that became Healers before. But the problem is that there aren't a lot of them – only a half-dozen, over a millennium of time. Of those, four married into the family. That only leaves two, and it is always possible that they had taken after their non-Black family members, magically speaking. Their memoirs aren't clear, so Archie doesn't know.

He looks to his classmates, especially in Defense and Transfiguration, to see if there are people like him. Kowalski is solid in Defense, less so in Transfiguration, but in his case Archie wonders if he isn't just benefitting from his Duelling Club for Defense. Graves is strong in Transfiguration but based on his magic Archie thinks he's Light. Most of the rest of his class is Neutral, he thinks, and he has a haunting fear that he is alone – he is the only Dark wizard in the Healing track, and it is only a matter of time before Healing stops working for him, before he can't continue.

He's busier than ever this year, and Harry's life bleeds over into his, more than ever before. It's her summer Potions internship research; he is proud of her and her discoveries, but it has resounding effects for him at AIM that he is sure she couldn't have predicted.

Hermione is the first to ask about it, because she is the best friend he could have imagined for himself. She special-orders a copy of the journal Harry's work is published in, and it's nearly the first thing she asks about on the aeroplane over, and a topic she keeps coming back to, over and over again. Archie wishes he could explain it to her, by all the gods he wants to, but he has no real comprehension of what Harry did, and can only parrot the explanation in almost the exact words Harry uses to explain it to him. It's about a month before it comes to a head, and with Archie's newfound concerns about the nature of his magic, Hermione's questions cut deeper than she knows.

"If a musical genius decided he wanted to be a mediocre anthropologist instead of a peerless composer, it's his right, but is it really for the best?" she asks, in response to Archie's rather blunt declaration that he simply doesn't want to talk about it. Her voice is thoughtful, considering, and Archie thinks she is probably genuinely musing over the philosophical question.

He doesn't have an answer for her, so he cracks a joke, teasing her into flustered laughter, hiding the sting. Because Archie isn't a musical genius and he will never be a peerless composer, and with his magic, he can't help but wonder if a mediocre anthropologist is all he will ever be.

It's not the only time Harry's original potions research comes up at AIM. Aside from Hermione asking him questions that he can't answer and Professor Tallum wanting an in-depth discussion that he can't provide, the British Ministry of Magic is sending him letters asking for samples that he doesn't have. The screaming letters he sends to Hogwarts produce, in record time, pristine and detailed notes explaining Harry's methodology and more samples than Archie knows what to do with, so he sends them all back to Britain, to the Ministry on Harry's behalf.

He doesn't know how she does it, how she has the time. She has more classes this year, just like he does, but she's still doing extra work for Professor Snape and she's still brewing for her job. Archie is barely keeping up on his own work, and Harry's classes are falling by the wayside. Harry isn't going to like that, it's an obvious threat to the ruse, but Archie can't seem to find the time or energy to deal with it.

It's not that he isn't getting work done. He is getting work done, even if it's a little later, a little sloppier than usual, and his grades are slipping. He keeps his first place in Potions, but falls into second place, maybe even third, or fourth, in others. In Healing, he is solidly in second, behind Hermione, and he wonders if he'll ever be first ever again. He wonders if he's peaked, years too soon, but with his new classes, wrangling his gift under control, and dealing with questions about Harry's discoveries, he can't find any more energy to keep up with her schoolwork, too.

He gets back to his room after dinner, after studying with Hermione, and he stares at his desk, at the neat and uncracked spines of Harry's Ancient Runes, Arithmancy and Magical Theory textbooks, and he can't bring himself to sit down and read them. His face slips, and so does he, sliding down the back of his door to sit on the floor, where he stares at the pile of books waiting for him at his desk. They stare back, innocent but weighty, waiting.

He's tired. He is always tired, and he looks at those books and promises a later that never comes. He is a disappointment, and Harry's disappointment in him feels inevitable. It is important that he get to those books and study them, so he knows everything that he is supposed to know, so he can protect Harry and the ruse, but he is tired. He is so, so tired – from the endless work, the endless worrying, and every step he takes, he runs into a wall that tells him that he can't. He isn't Harry. He isn't a mad Potions genius – he might be mad, but he isn't a genius at all. He is a Black, and he doesn't know what that means anymore, for his future.

He doesn't know, and he puts it off, and every day becomes a little harder.

XXX

He looks forward to going home, if only because it means that he can maybe read a whole term's worth of Harry's new subjects in three weeks when he doesn't have to keep up with his own work at the same time. The good thing about the last three and a half months is that he has been too busy to feel as lonely, as empty as he did last summer, even if it's replaced with worry, exhaustion, a constant, incessant grind more tiring than anything he's had to deal with before. How is Harry doing it? She's incredible, that's his only answer, effortlessly keeping up with his work as well as hers, with the Ministry's demands and her Potions work and her job. Maybe he can catch up over the holidays, refresh, lose this lingering sense of unease, unhappiness, emptiness, that seems to be following him since the last summer.

Harry's term, for once, hasn't included any deathly, terrible mysteries or attacks on her life. There is an attack, a bizarre creatures attack on all Hogwarts at Halloween, followed by a Gringotts search, but none of that seems to be related to Harry in particular. Then again, Archie considers, it never seems to be, and Harry always gets dragged into it anyway. Maybe it's just that she knows less about it this year, or that it's less important to her, because she talks about it only in passing before focusing on what truly worries her: both he and Harry must be at the Gala this year.

He hears her out, interrupts when the obvious solution doesn't seem to have occurred to her. He can just go to the Gala as himself – he _is_ the real Arcturus Rigel Black, isn't he? His magic says so. His gift says so. His madness says so.

He says so with a confidence that he doesn't really feel, and he isn't reassured by her worry that she won't be able to pass herself as _Rigel Black_ for so many hours at a time, in front of her friends. It's like Archie doesn't exist – he's not Harry, and he's not Rigel Black, and he's effectively offered to pretend to be himself in front of the whole of wizarding nobility.

Pretending to be himself – it sounds like such a contradiction in terms, but Archie wonders if it doesn't make more sense than it should. He has to pretend to be himself, pretend to be Rigel Black, because without those things he is something else, something he doesn't want to be. Without Harry, without Healing and Hermione, he only has his legacy, the Dark Black magic and the madness, and he doesn't want it. He's not Harry Potter, potions prodigy revolutionizing the Potions community with her research, but he's not Rigel Black, hero of the Sleeping Sickness and slayer of basilisks. But he wishes he were, by all the gods he wishes he were, because he would rather be that than what he _is_.

Dad, too, is well-meaning but his words strike hard. Archie is too much like Harry, he has depended too much on her, and Dad wants to see him do something for himself: his own project, his own internship. It's a good idea, and Archie agrees cheerfully, but he worries. Most of what Archie is, the part of himself that he likes, that he approves of, that isn't madness, is tied up in _Harry_. Without Harry, what is Archie? Without Harry, Archie is Dark, Archie is mad, Archie is nothing that he wants to be, and he doesn't _ever _want to wake up to fail to realize his own madness.

Even with his doubts, his fears, his anxieties running through his head, Archie still sounds the same, and that may be the most ironic part of all. He still sounds cheerful, he still sounds happy, and no one takes a second look to see that it's only skin-deep. It's not that Archie is hiding anything from his family, not purposely, because this is how he is supposed to be.

He is Archie Black, and he is supposed to be cheerful, buoyant, happy. This is how Archie always was with people, and anything else is the madness. When Dad comes to him, Dad expects to see joy, he expects to see pranks and easy smiles and laughter. When Harry looks at him, she expects a laidback listener, she expects a joking, prankster cousin. These are easy for Archie, because these are how he has always related to his family, and they are the path of least resistance. He doesn't have the energy to navigate a new way of being, nor does he want to, so he falls back into his habits, and he smiles, he teases, he laughs.

He wishes it were true. He wants to be the smiling, cheerful, easy-going son that Dad has always had, he wants to be the prankster cousin for Harry. He doesn't want to feel the way he feels, he doesn't want anyone to worry about him, especially because his problems are so minimal, and the only reason he keeps feeling this way is because he is mad.

It's his fault that he's not on top of Harry's work – he just has to work a little harder, he just has to concentrate a little more, he just has to pull himself together. He has no reason to be sad, he has no reason to feel alone, he has no reason to be anything but happy. The face he presents to the world is a happy one, because that's who he should be, and even if someone asked, he wouldn't know how to explain it.

Sometimes, in his room, staring at the ceiling in the room made for a Slytherin boy that is not him, he tries to imagine what he would say. _Hey, Harry_, he imagines saying. _Sometimes, I feel really alone._ And she would look at him, patient, and ask why. And he would look back at her and shrug. _Because I'm mad_.

Even imagining it makes him feel worse, and he _never_ wants to have that conversation. He sounds like such a child, whining because things aren't perfect all the time. Look at what Harry has lived through – the attempt on her life in first year, the Sleeping Sickness, the basilisk in second year. Harry has a million more reasons to complain, and she never does.

Preparations for the Gala eat up the time that Archie was thinking of using to read Harry's textbooks, and she doesn't ask about it other than a single, disappointed glance when he admits he hasn't kept up with her extra subjects. Instead, she is preoccupied with making sure that Archie has no aura, then with making sure that he can sham as her in front of all her friends. She takes him to the Lower Alleys, one day, and Archie is surprised and discomfited by the whole experience.

It's not the poverty. It's not the fact that the Lower Alleys are not what Archie had thought she was talking about when she said, "the Alleys", not really. It's not even that Harry hasn't told him about the Alleys, because she has, she's talked about going into the Alleys and her friends there. It's none of that.

It's that Harry _misled_ him, even if she didn't mean to. Did she? He doesn't like to think so, but he didn't know she was wandering around way back here. He had thought she was keeping to Craftsmen's Alleys, or to the alleys around Knockturn, and she had never said any different. Then again, he never asked, and maybe she assumed that Archie knew. That seems more likely, but he still feels a little hurt anyway. He catches the emotion, examines it, and decides, for once, that it is acceptable because he is only a _little_ hurt.

He doesn't fit in back here, even if he's beside her. He follows her into the Alleys, and he feels the weight of people watching him, he knows that they're staring at him beneath hooded eyes, at his fine robes, his brand-new boots, his golden pendant, his silver pocketwatch chain. He catches the way that her friend, Mr. Frein, keeps his eyes on him a split second longer than on Harry. He _definitely_ feels the judgement of her friends in the Dancing Phoenix, where they aren't even trying to hide it – Harry's friend, Rispah, is decidedly not friendly, and there's only so far his self-deprecating jokes can take him. He doesn't belong here, and he knows it, and he feels their cool caution like an icy, unwelcome breeze, knife-sharp.

The Weasleys, a few days later, a trial run for the Gala itself, is no better. No, that is a lie – his day at the Weasleys is wonderful. He _likes_ the Weasleys, he thinks the twins are the fantastic, and Ron is cool, and everyone is so friendly, so welcoming. He feels like himself for a day, like the person he should be, and Harry has to tell him to calm down, but it's so different than his new normal that he barely notices that they think he's _Rigel Black_ and not Archie. It's so easy to blend in, to fall in with these pranksters, and he loves it. He loves the noise, he loves the action, he loves the chaos. He is _happy_ at the Weasleys, and with a bit of a pang, he realizes he hasn't felt this kind of happiness in far too long. Has it been a year since he felt this way? Surely less than that, but he can't remember.

It's like a breath of fresh air, a new start, but when he goes home, his life hits him harder than ever, and he sticks to his room for the rest of that evening, hovering over Harry's textbooks, unable to concentrate. Harry's life, whether as Harry or as Rigel, isn't his life. The Weasleys aren't his friends, and even if he gets to enjoy their comfort, their friendship for the few brief hours when he's pretending to be _Rigel Black_, they aren't his friends. They don't even know who he is, and he can't forget that.

He wishes they did, though. He wishes that they were his friends, as much as Harry's. Or, if not the Weasleys, he wishes he had friends _like_ the Weasleys, friends who are loud, boisterous, who play Quidditch and throw pranks with abandon. And that is a betrayal of Hermione, because that means that Hermione is _not enough_ for him, and then he feels selfish, guilty, for even having the thought. Hermione should be enough for him – Hermione should _always_ be enough for him.

The Gala is far worse. It is at the Parkinson manor, and from the moment he arrives, Archie feels out of place. Everyone is glittering, almost, and even in his best robes, which he knows are fashionable, he doesn't feel like he belongs. He is a noble, but not like this, he doesn't belong in this world any better than he belongs anywhere else. Everything is too nice, too polished, and the way that people are moving around, laughing – it feels alien, a new world. It's like everyone in the room has a guidebook to behaviour, and he doesn't know how he's supposed to fit in here.

The first thing that happens is that Uncle Regulus Black finds them. He has words for Archie about the time he spends with Harry, about her rubbing off on him, and the irony is stark. The _Rigel Black_ that Uncle Regulus clearly likes is Harry Potter, and Archie is not her. Archie is the imposter, and the encounter only sets the tone for the rest of the night.

He pretends to lead Harry to her friends, pretends like he recognizes them and makes jokes. He doesn't worry much about Draco's Empathy – frankly, the empathy has been the least of his concerns. Archie's default feeling now is _nothing_, a nothing punctuated by waves of fear, or doubt, or anxiety, and rarely spikes of something like contentment or happiness, and the Gala is no different. Draco can't read nothing, and Archie plays, pretending to be Rigel Black, pretending like he is one of them when he isn't.

Harry leaves him, after barely fifteen minutes, with a look and smile that tells him that she believes in him. She believes in him to protect her friendships, not to let the ruse slip, but he isn't so confident. Without her there, Archie says little, but fortunately he doesn't think Rigel talks a lot either. Mostly, he listens with one ear, makes half-hearted sounds of agreement every now and then, and lets the words flow around him, excluding him as they should. When the dancing starts, one of her friends invites him to dance, and he accepts without thinking about it. Dancing is easier than pretending to listen, pretending to talk – dancing is just movement, steps trained in him from childhood.

The later encounter with Caelum Lestrange hits the point home. Lestrange doesn't think he belongs at the Gala, and his spitting vitriol is only everything that Archie already feels and knows about himself. It feels right, standing there at the center of a group of people he doesn't know, some of whom he thinks are Harry's friends, just taking it as Lestrange snaps at him. He _doesn't_ belong there, Lestrange is absolutely right, and he really should go home. He isn't welcome there. He would like to turn and simply walk away, but that's not what Harry would do, so he toughs it out, tries to react how she would react, and manages just long enough for Harry to come and rescue him. Things are easier when Harry is there – when Harry is there, taking the lead, Archie can just go with it, as he always had before. It's easy, following the worn paths that she has always made for him, that he has always fallen in before.

There are only a couple moments throughout the evening that he looks at and thinks are even remotely salvageable. He feels useful, making the formal introduction for Harry to Master Snape, when he gives the esteemed Potions Master advice for how to approach Dad. This is what the whole ruse was for, so Harry could have her dreams, and he wants nothing more than that, so it's the only moment in the entire night when he feels something – not happiness, but maybe satisfaction, a job well done, the fulfilment of his purpose. It feels right, and he feels right, and even if he's not _happy_, he feels something, and that something is not sad, it's not lonely, it's not fear or worry or doubt. And that, alone, is something.

It's the same thing he feels when he Heals. He doesn't feel joy when he Heals, he doesn't feel happiness. When he Heals, he feels duty, he feels responsibility, he feels satisfaction, and that is better than how he usually feels. At the Gala, that is no different – something else in his brain clicks on when he leans down beside Harry, when he begins spelling Blood Replenisher Potion into Elder Ogden's stomach, as they begin jointly patching Elder Ogden up together. Harry could have done it herself, but he's there anyway, and Healing is a different kind of space. There is no space for pride in Healing, only the satisfaction of a saved life, and Archie lets her soak up the credit. She gets so little of it for the things she normally does at Hogwarts.

Winter break is too long, and Archie still doesn't get into Harry's extra subjects. He returns to AIM, her barely opened textbooks still in his trunk, and he has no idea what he's going to do.

XXX

The winter term at AIM picks up faster than he could have imagined, and his assignments pile up on his desk. He gets through them with Hermione by his side, keeping him on track. It's not obvious, how much work she is doing to keep him up to speed, he doesn't think; they've always done their work together, they've always studied together. It's just that before, he studied on his own, too, and now he doesn't.

He's given up on Harry's new subjects, and most of her old ones. He shouldn't have, he knows, but it just isn't happening. He's a whole term behind on her Runes, her Arithmancy and her Magical Theory, and catching up is impossible. It's a risk, a huge one, but there doesn't seem to be anything he can do about it. Every weekend, when he sits down to try to make a bit of a dent into her work, he picks up a book, he opens it, and then he sits and stares and then the next thing he knows, hours have passed and he doesn't know how because he's only read about ten pages. Eventually, he always just turns around and goes back to bed, pondering his own failure.

Something is different about Hermione. Archie thinks he might be in love with her, a feeling that comes through so much weaker than he had always expected love to be. Dad has always said that falling in love with Mum was like being smashed with a sledgehammer, and Archie doesn't feel that. For him, it's more of a slow, creeping dependency, a _reliance_ – he doesn't know what he would do at AIM without Hermione. Hermione is always there for him, she is his only real friend at school, and he depends on her as much as he does on Harry, if not more so. And unlike Harry, he hasn't grown up with her in the same way, so maybe it's logical that he's falling in love with her, if that's what this is. He'd like to kiss her and find out, but he doesn't dare.

Hermione suspects something. She is watching him far too closely, sometimes she opens her mouth to say something, and then she shuts it very quickly. Archie is terrified of what she might have worked out, so he avoids it, ducking the subject whenever he can. Is it that Archie is slipping – has she noticed that Archie's responses, his answers, are not as complete as they used to be? Is it that she's picked up on his magic, his Dark, aggressive Black family magic that seems at odds to the practice of Healing? Does she realize that Archie is an imposter, not just in the sense of not being _Harry Potter_, but in the sense of being in the Healing program at all?

Has she realized that he is mad?

He is still second in all his subjects, except for a first in Potions, but the facts don't seem to matter. He's always dreading the moment when it all inevitably comes falling apart. His interview, after Basic Healing, when they're checking their magical cores only feeds into his fears – he isn't powerful enough for his chosen field, not while he maintains his disguise, but he can't imagine studying anything except Infectious Disease, either. So, he smiles, he pushes forward, tamping down on his worries and tells the matronly witch to put him down for Infectious Disease anyway. Maybe something will change in the next few years, maybe once he shakes off this feeling, he'll think of something else, or Harry will think of something else, and it'll work out. It _has_ to work out, because if this doesn't work out, he doesn't know what he'll do.

Or, maybe he does. That day was the first time that Archie goes and sits on the rooftop to AIM, lets his legs dangle over the edge, feels the treacherous wind blowing through his robes. He doesn't think about it, not seriously – he's not _really_ thinking about this. It's just … it's an option. It's an option that makes him feel better, just knowing it's an option. And he doesn't even feel bad about it, not really. In Mind Healing, they say a certain amount of suicidal thought was normal, especially for teenagers.

He wonders how much is considered normal, and if what he has is considered normal. Sometimes, the madness tells him, it feels as if Harry has taken everything from him – she has his place at Hogwarts, she has friends as him, she has the entire Lower Alleys available at her disposal. But, Archie reminds himself, those things are all hers – he barely knows Draco or Pansy, and he has no particular feeling about them whatsoever. He doesn't especially care for the Lower Alleys, either.

He thinks that all he really wants is a life – a life beyond Harry, beyond Healing, beyond Hermione. A life that's more that studying, a life that's more than the ruse, a life as more than a rough replacement, a stand-in for someone else. But he thinks these things, and he feels guilty, because Harry, Healing and Hermione should be enough for anyone.

He stands up, taking one last, lingering look over the edge, and he walks away. The ledge will be there later, and if he goes and sits there often, no one has to know.

Hermione corners him a few days later, telling him quite bluntly that she knows that he is a girl, and he doesn't deny it. Harry Potter _is_ a girl, after all, and Archie is her willing stand-in. He lies through his teeth about the rest, telling her that he is more comfortable living life as a boy right now, reveals his Metamorphmagic to her. She, with her good, kind heart, promises to look up past Metamorphmagi, to see if there is a correlation between his discomfort in his own body and his gift. He hates lying to her, but truth be told, he hates the lie more than the fact he is lying to her.

Admitting he is a girl makes him shrink a little more, makes him feel a little more insubstantial. Not because he thinks less of girls, but because he _isn't_ one, and not being a girl is one of the biggest lines distinguishing him from Harry. Years into the ruse, he isn't Rigel, and he isn't Harry, and the space taken up by Harry seems to have grown and grown until he is little more than an appendage to her. A Dark, slightly mad appendage.

Finding an internship as Arcturus Rigel Black is supposed to help, but it doesn't. This is a time that is supposed to help him find himself, but the problem is that Arcturus Rigel Black isn't a Healer. He has no real Healing credentials whatsoever, and while _Harry Potter_ certainly could apply to many prestigious internships and maybe even be considered, Arcturus Rigel Black can't.

Sleeping Sickness aside, Arcturus Rigel Black has very little recommending him to any Healing internship. Hogwarts is not known as a Healing school, and even though Harry's marks, that he's relying on, are good, they're not _relevant_. How does it look, applying to internships when his official extra subjects are, not Healing, but _Ancient Runes_, _Arithmancy, _and _Magical Theory_? His "official" record shows next to no interest in Healing, and the letter Harry gets for him from Madam Pomfrey is _good_, but it's not the same as three years of Healing studies.

He writes application after application anyway – or he tries to. Realistically, he maybe gets two or three out in a week, then he misses a week and gets four out the next week, one the week after, then nothing for about three weeks until he panics and does eight in a weekend.

He doesn't hear anything back. The applications go into an abyss, and he doesn't even receive an acknowledgement of his application, let alone a formal rejection.

By late April, things are desperate, and Archie doesn't have many options left. He's not winning an internship on his own merits, that much is clear, and he hates that. Or, not his own merits – if he was applying under his own merits, he would at least have three years of the AIM Healing program to offer, but he doesn't have that. He thinks about throwing in the towel, simply telling Dad that he didn't get picked for one, but he flinches away from that as well. Archie might be a failure of a Black, one of the mad ones and not one of the stars, but Dad doesn't know that yet, no one seems to realize that yet, and he doesn't want them to realize that. They'll find out eventually, but he'll fight that day off as long as he can.

There are always opportunities in the developing world, and Archie can _pay_ for a spot at one of them. They're what people from other schools, who want to be Healers and don't have the right classes to show their interest, or even what people at his school who don't have the best grades, do. It gives them a bit of a background, gives them a leg up, and he _hates_ having to take this route. It tastes like failure, but between paying for an unpaid internship, or going back to Britain and telling Dad that he couldn't find an internship, he'll pay for a spot at the Darien Gap.

The Darien Gap is, at least, the best of those internship opportunities. Unlike most of the international internships that he can buy a spot at, it looks like he'll actually be expected to work, instead of mostly travel and vacation with a spot of work. It doesn't look like a _bad_ place to have an internship, and it even looks like a good place for someone with an interest in Infectious Disease, but it's not like the internship that Harry had last year. It's not an internship he earned, and everyone in his field will see the words on his curriculum vitae, years from now, and they'll know what it means. But it's still better than disappointing Dad.

Towards the end of the year, he receives a letter from Harry, and he flinches. It's bad – it's so much worse than any other year. She's kept it brief, sparing him details in favour of outlining her current problem, but it's _really_ bad. Harry was kidnapped, held underground for weeks, and after she was rescued, she had been in the Hospital Wing for _weeks_.

Archie _knows_ Harry – he knows Harry better than anyone in the world. Harry does not stay in Hospital Wings, not unless things are seriously, seriously wrong. Harry doesn't even _go_ to Hospital Wings unless things are horribly wrong, not at Hogwarts, not when the first diagnostic that Madam Pomfrey casts will be one that identifies her sex. Harry walked around with a broken wrist for three weeks in her first year, just to avoid going to the Hospital Wing! And yet, Harry is in the _Hospital Wing, _and that means it is at least a thousand times worse than she makes it sound.

At least Harry's secret is still safe, because her letter doesn't tell him that the game is up in any way. Still, the fact remains that Dad has been to Hogwarts, has _seen_ Harry, and their usual trick to change places at home won't work. Harry doesn't know what to do about it, and even though her letter doesn't say so explicitly, she's not in any shape to come up with a solution.

It's the only thing he can do for her, so he ignores half his subjects and focuses on making a plan for their switch back. He finds more Polyjuice, he sends it to her with a book on Magical Theatre that he finds in the library and special-orders a copy of, which has about eight different disguise spells, and he tells her to figure out how she's supposed to look now, take a picture, then use one of the new disguise spells to make herself take that form until she can brew her long-lasting Polyjuice Potion. He'll keep the form he has until after he returns from the Darien Gap, and when he gets back, everything will look as it should.

It's a good plan. He drops to eighth in his Defense and Transfiguration classes, and fifteenth, just below the middle of the class, in Charms.

XXX

It is far worse that her letter made it sound. He knew it would be, because Harry's letters always downplay the danger she is in, but it is far, far worse than he had imagined.

She nearly died in that cave. Harry nearly died in that cave, and Archie could do nothing about it. All Archie _can_ do is wrap his arms around her as she cries, rub her back and make soft little soothing noises that can't possibly soothe anyone. She was in that hole for _two weeks_, and even the discovery that Harry had a Time Turner all along, that she was so on top of everything because she quite literally had more time than he did, doesn't make anything better. Archie doesn't care about that part. Archie only cares about Harry, about how Harry is doing, about how Harry is Healing from her obviously traumatic experience.

He doesn't want to go to the Darien Gap. He doesn't want to leave her alone in Britain, because Harry needs him. No one else knows about her experience, because they all think it happened to _him_, and no one goes through that kind of experience without needing help. It's help that only Archie can provide, but he can only do that if he's _here_, with her, and he can't be.

"I wish I didn't have to go," he whispers, his arms around her. The Darien Gap is an experience, but at the end of the day it's only an internship that he paid for, it's not something he earned, and it's not worth that much. It's a leg up for his future, but it's nothing that he can be proud of, and all things being equal he would rather be at home in Britain, for Harry. Being there for Harry is his primary responsibility, and mad as he is, he is the only person in the world that Harry can be completely, fully honest with.

"You have to go, Arch," Harry replies, pulling away from him and wiping her face. "You have to have time away from England to make both your changing appearance and your mental stability plausible." She isn't looking at him, instead focusing on scrubbing her face.

Archie watches her for a moment, words stuck in his through. He hates it, but she's right. Of course, she's right. Being away from England means that her friends won't be trying to track her down, it means that no one will be asking questions of her or looking too closely. It even means that Harry can heal from her trauma, as herself, because no one is going to be looking too much at Harry Potter for changes – that all belongs to him, to Arcturus Rigel Black. He has no choice but to go, on this internship that isn't his dream, because it's what it is best for the ruse. "I know," he says, and the words sound so final, so conclusive, to him.

So much of his life is about what is best for the ruse. Archie gives, and he gives, and he gives. His feelings subside when he is Healing, when he is with Harry, when he is with Hermione. When Harry reaches out for him, reaching for support, he gives unreservedly, without question, because that is what he has always done and that is what he is supposed to do and that is what he _wants _to do. There is no other answer.

But for himself, late at night or early in the morning sometimes, when he struggles to sleep, when he struggles with his madness, he has the treacherous thought that maybe he has given away too much – that he has given away so much that he is only wisps of smoke, fading in the air, barely there. It's only at these times that he allows himself to think things like this, because they're so wrong, they're so clearly mad that he doesn't allow himself these thoughts at any other time. These thoughts are a betrayal of Harry, of everything and everyone around him, and he can't let himself think like this. He always rolls over, when he thinks these thoughts, and tries to go sleep. Years on, he no longer expects things to look better in the morning.

The Darien Gap is better than he expects. Archie is working, and there is always Healing to be done, not least because his fellow interns were clearly hoping to vacation a little more and keep taking days off to go see and do interesting things. A small part of Archie would like to go with them – there is a multi-day trek that two of his fellow interns take, which visits three apparently stunning waterfalls, but he is at the Darien Gap first and foremost to Heal, so he doesn't even ask.

He doesn't have time, anyway. He's much better than the other interns, and he can tell that the Healers in charge of the program are surprised. It's only a few weeks before he's given more and more challenging tasks, and while he's satisfied, it's also hard because, when he checks his core in the evening, he realizes that he really _can't_ do this work while using his Metamorphmagus gift. The Healing he needs to do just requires too much of his core, and while that might be fine for the internship, he doesn't know how he'll finish his program at AIM. He sleeps a lot still, but at least in the jungle that's seen as normal – they don't waste much energy on lighting spells, and they rise and sleep with the sun.

He worries about Harry, in the gaps between chasing after his senior Healers and his various Healing tasks. He reminds himself, every day, that leaving was something that he _had_ to do, and some days he's even able to convince himself of it. But many days, he isn't – the simple fact is that no one at home knows about her ordeal, and there is no one else she can rely on. He should be at home, with her, helping her through it, and he isn't. And all he can do is write her letters from the Darien Gap, cheerful notes that only talk about how great his internship is and leave out the rest. She doesn't need that from him. No one needs that from him.

He doesn't hear from her often. It's not that he expects to – she's not a good correspondent at the best of times, and he doesn't expect to hear from her even once given everything that has happened. She sends him a letter asking what she should do about a letter from Hermione, and he tells her to meet with Hermione. Even if Archie can't be there, even if Hermione doesn't know about what happened, he hopes Harry can find some comfort with Hermione anyway. Hermione is wonderful, so it's something, and that's better than the nothing at all that he can provide.

The mirrors help, even if it's a struggle, that first night, to pull his proper _Harry Potter _face on. He only has to change his face, which is easier than his whole body, and he has enough magic left to manage that, at least. He smiles, he laughs with his family, he shows them the gifts that he has only just opened and that he has no feelings about whatsoever, since a fair number of them are really Harry's. It's easy, smiling and laughing, and it makes it easier for everyone to think that he is healing in the Darien Gap from his harrowing experience at Hogwarts. He talks about Quidditch, about the World Cup that he's supposed to be excited to see, and everyone accepts it. They're happy, and he's not, but at least he can do that much. He can make sure everyone else is happy.

When the Quarantine is called, Archie doesn't care. The good thing about the Quarantine is that there is more work. His hands are busy, and his mind is busy, and that means he doesn't have time or space to think about anything much at all. When left alone, alone with his madness, when he's unable to sleep, he ponders his feelings – it's not sadness, it's not jealousy, it's not anger. It's not anything – if anything, it's the absence of feeling, so thorough that he doesn't know if he _can_ feel anything at all. He's empty, a vessel for Healing, for caring for others, and that's all that he has in his life.

People die in the Quarantine. Archie doesn't.

XXX

He returns home to Britain only a few days before he has to leave for AIM again, and he spends it with Harry, with Dad, with his family. These days are objectively good, and the part of him that is not mad knows he should be enjoying himself. Harry is there, listening intently at his adventures, Dad is there and for once he can tell Dad something _real_ about his life.

He doesn't lie to anyone, least of all Harry, and Harry thinks something is wrong. She is chalking it up to his experiences in the Darien Gap, but in truth it's probably only the feeling he has been having for years, blown to the extremes. He wants to live his life to the fullest, the way he told her – he wants to kiss Hermione, if only to say he's done it. The only thing is, he doesn't know what living life to the fullest means.

If he's honest with himself, his life feels like it's on a timeline, and his internship in the Darien Gap only amplifies that. People die, all the time – death is not a stranger. Death is an inevitability, and Archie only has three things to live for: Healing, Hermione and Harry.

Healing is the most difficult one, by far. After a summer abroad, he knows that if he uses his Metamorphmagus talents, he won't have enough magic for his chosen subspecialty. He picks up a second specialization, a less magic-intensive one in epidemiology, which is much more theoretical and barely needs magic at all – he doesn't like it, but when he inevitably fails out of Infectious Disease, when they all figure out that he's only pretending like he can keep up, he needs _something_ to fall back on. He dreads the day that they tell him to leave the Infectious Disease program. At least epidemiologists still work closely with infectious disease specialists, even if they don't do very much Healing at all.

There's Hermione. He loves Hermione, or he is pretty sure he does. Hermione is his anchor at AIM, an encouraging voice that tells him what he doesn't deserve to hear. She sits beside him every day in the classes that they share, joins him for all their meals, and she drags him through studying even if he doesn't feel like studying. Hermione Granger is probably the main reason that Archie is still sitting at second in his main Healing classes, that he is still in the top half of most of his other classes. Hermione Granger is his guilty pleasure – she is the friend that he doesn't deserve to have, and one day she'll turn around and realize it.

There's Harry. Archie's life revolves around Harry, around the ruse – she is the first thing he thinks about when he thinks about doing anything new, and it's her risks that he weighs. She's the one he worries about, because she's been through so much, and Archie hasn't even been able to be there for her when she needs him most. Years on, Harry can still ask anything of him, and he will give whatever is in his power to provide, and that includes Healing. That includes his specialty in Infectious Disease. That includes love, because she is still his betrothed, and even if Dad and Uncle James and Aunt Lily have written in a clause for unsuitability, he will never break that unless he is certain, absolutely certain, that Harry is safe. That includes Hermione, if Hermione could even be convinced to look at him that way. Harry, unlike Hermione, unlike Healing, _needs_ him.

And there's the madness, always lurking around the corner. Archie does not want to be mad – it's a Black legacy, along with the Metamorphmagus gift, with his Dark magic, with his power. Archie will one day be fully, completely mad, as mad as the Blacks of old, and Archie does not want to live that day. On that day, Archie will only be a threat to everyone he loves, and he does not want that future.

Harry calls him more now that they don't have to write letters, now that they don't need to worry about what might happen if their letters are confiscated. She calls him when the ruse is becoming too much, she calls him at all hours, even if she must know that he is sleeping. He always wakes up for her. He always picks up when she calls, no matter the time, and he always sits with her, listening to her talk, letting her get it all out so she can face another day of the ruse. That's what his purpose is, he thinks – that is his main purpose, to make sure that Harry is okay, because no one else will.

The news of the Blood Tournament comes. Hermione finds out everything she can about it, and Archie tells her what he knows, hesitating only because he knows what's next. Hermione will go – of course she will go. She is the top student at AIM, and she has about six references for the Tournament without even trying. Archie wishes he could go with her, or even that he could _explain_ why he can't take an open stand the way that she can, but he can't. Harry is still masquerading as him, and the most that he can do for her is to talk to Harry about it, ask Harry to keep an eye on Hermione for him.

The day that Hermione leaves for Hogwarts is a hard one. She's excited, and Archie is happy for her, and he gives her a tight hug. She hugs him back, a little hesitant.

"Go win that Tournament," he says, his voice quiet. "Write to me."

"I will," she replies, pulling back and putting a bright smile on her face. It's a little uncertain, but it's still there. "With me out of the way, want to see if you can take my first-place spots?"

Archie laughs, a small one that doesn't feel real in the slightest. "I'll try."

Harry looks out for Hermione at Hogwarts. He knows, because Hermione's letters soon start talking about Rigel – Rigel was kind enough to give her a tour of the school. Rigel was kind enough to show her to the library when someone sent her to get lost in the dungeons. No one at school is talking to her, but Rigel tries to make her feel included – he invites her to sit with him at the Slytherin table at meals, and he's so kind to her. Rigel defended her and they got into an argument about blood status together over lunch, then they both walked away from the Slytherin table together to eat lunch in the kitchens. Rigel comes up in her letters, more and more, and Archie folds up those letters and puts them away.

He isn't upset about this. Any hint of sadness, of being upset, is madness, and he is happy that Harry and Hermione are friends – they are both such wonderful people, and he should be happy that Hermione has found an ally at Hogwarts, that Harry likes Archie's best friend. This is a good sign for the future, that his cousin and his best friend get along, because maybe, in the best of all possible worlds that he no longer believes in, they'll all be together one day, as one, big, happy, family.

Without Hermione, AIM becomes a big, lonely, harrowing place. Archie doesn't have other friends and, as a fourth year now, everyone's friend groups have long since set. He doesn't have the energy to try to insert himself into any new groups, and he ends up spending more and more time alone.

He stops taking meals in the dining room – instead, he wanders in, fixes himself a plate, and takes it to his room to eat while staring at a textbook. He isn't _reading_ the textbooks, not really, he's usually too focused on chewing mechanically before he returns the plates to the dining hall, but it's easier eating in his room than in the dining hall. In his room, he doesn't have to face the fact that he's sitting alone, by himself, while crowds chatter and laugh around him.

It's the same with the common room. He doesn't spend much time in the common room anymore, because that's where his classmates are social, that's where people relax. He doesn't have anyone to spend time with anymore, he doesn't have anyone to relax with anymore, so he just doesn't. Sitting in the common room by himself, even with the school paper or the Daily Prophet, which he has subscribed to for news of the Tournament, feels pathetic. He's not looking for attention – he doesn't need attention. It's easier in his room, where at least he doesn't have to look around and see what he's missing.

When he tires of his room, he goes up to the school roof. No one is ever up there, and on the roof, he can feel the breeze, he can smell fresh air, he can dangle his feet over the edge and ponder life. Life, and death, and he can look over the edge, feel the edge, and wonder if this is the point where death would be better than life. Life is a choice, he thinks, and thinking that makes him feel better. Every time he is up there, feeling the edge, it's easier to remember the good things in his life.

No one has caught him out in Healing, yet. He's still muddling along in his Infectious Disease program, which is quite theoretical at this point still, and epidemiology is difficult but he's still making it through. Hermione is still safe – she and Harry had a close call with a Peruvian Vipertooth in the first task, but they're both fine, and he hears both from the Daily Prophet and from Uncle James that Harry did well. Harry herself calls him, both before and after the task, telling him all about it and reassuring him that she's fine. Archie might be alone, but he still has all these things.

The second task goes well, too, even though Harry tells him afterwards that she's had to send their families away, telling them that they are too distracting, because the risk to the ruse is too much. She was almost caught by their parents, with her boots at one of the tasks, and so Archie is getting a pair of her old boots for Christmas. Archie just nods, accepts it, because that's what Harry says is necessary. Harry is the one in danger, and she can make whatever decisions she thinks is necessary, and Archie will manage. He knows that it will be another blow, on a list of many, to his relationship with Dad, but he'll have to deal with it. Hermione says that this task is more harrowing than the last, but she is fine.

Both Harry and Hermione are fine, and Archie sits on the roof a few days after, reminding himself of that. They're both fine. They're together and they're both fine, and that should be enough for him. That _is_ enough for him, and he walks away from the ledge again. There's only one more task before the Blood Champions for each of the categories are chosen, and one part of him hopes that both Harry and Hermione make it, and another part of him hopes that neither of them make it, so this whole hellish nightmare can be over.

They both make it, of course. Hermione is brilliant, a once-in-a-decade mind, and Harry has the kind of magical prowess that most witches and wizards can only dream about. They both make it, and Riddle is throwing a Yule Ball for the Champions, right at Hogwarts. Harry is taking Hermione as her date, and Archie feels his heart sinking a little about it, even if Harry assures him that it's nothing serious, it's nothing like that, they're just friends. Hermione wouldn't have had a date otherwise, and Archie knows enough about Wizarding Britain to know that is true. Harry is doing Hermione a favour, looking out for her, just as Archie asked, and even Hermione's letter says the same.

But it means that Archie can't come home for the holidays. If Archie goes home, he would have to pretend to be Harry the entire time, and he doesn't think he can. He can pretend to be Harry for short times, but not for three weeks on end, so he signs up to stay at AIM for the first time in four years.

It isn't like he would have seen them anyway, he thinks, lying back in his bed at AIM, listening to the sound of excited voices, passing by his door, heading home for the holidays. He probably would have had to find an excuse for missing the Yule Ball, even if it was supposedly open to the public, because of the risk it would have posed to the ruse. He can use the winter break at AIM to study, to try to bring his grades up from where they have slipped over the term. He isn't in first place, as Hermione had half-expected he would be when she returned; to the contrary, he's somewhere in the middle, within the pack instead of leading it.

Days blur into weeks, which blur into months. Winter break ends, without Archie having studied much of anything at all, though he would be damned if he knew what he had done with the break, and they're back in classes. The hallways become busier, but Archie doesn't really care – whether the hallways are empty or full doesn't make a difference to how he feels.

Life becomes a grey sort of pattern, where he goes to classes, mechanically does his assignments, skims the Daily Prophet or letters from Hermione or Aunt Lily, or Uncle James, then he sleeps. He answers his mirror, any time that Harry calls him, he's always a listening ear, always ready to calm her down, soothe her, comfort her, whatever she needs. Everything in his life comes down to these things: struggling through Healing, looking for news of Hermione and Harry, and being there for Harry whenever she needs him.

XXX

When Harry is discovered, at the end of the Blood Tournament, the whole world knows. For once, Harry _doesn't_ call him, and he doesn't blame her – from the report in the Daily Prophet, it doesn't seem like she had any time to do _anything_ before leaving, going on the run.

Archie is out on the grounds reading the paper when he sees the article, which is front page news. _POTTER HEIR UNMASKED_ reads the headline, and Archie stops, swallowing, before diving into it.

The article is scant on the details, but as far as Archie can tell, reading between the lines, the last task had a challenge in it that somehow caused her disguise to slip. No one could deny who it was; her eyes are still, years on, famous throughout the Wizarding Britain, and she was recognized. There are also only so many people that she could possibly be – close enough to Arcturus Rigel Black to take his identity, close enough for long enough that no one, not even their parents, are able to work out the ruse. It's obvious, the ruse, once someone has the main pieces, and Archie puts down the paper, staring out at the AIM, and he thinks.

It's all over, he realizes slowly, pondering the consequences. They'll know, soon enough, that if it is Harry Potter in Britain, it cannot possibly be Harry Potter at AIM. He wonders how soon the AIM administration will come to fetch him, how much trouble he'll be in while Harry is on the run. Archie isn't Harry, and he's left at AIM, holding the smoking gun. Harry is gone, and there's nothing more that Archie can do to help her. No, more than that – Archie _is_ the smoking gun. Archie is the only one in the world, aside from Harry, who can definitively confirm or deny the ruse. Archie knows how they did it, Archie knows how long it's been happening, Archie is the one who knows _everything_.

Harry doesn't need him anymore, and Archie is a _liability_. Archie is the one that they can capture and question, Archie is the one that they can use against her. So much of Archie is tied into Harry – so much of him is based around Harry, what Harry needs, what Harry wants. So much of him is based around the ruse, around Harry needing him because she needs his name at Hogwarts, because she needs him to help her navigate the ruse. The ruse doesn't exist anymore, and Archie is now the danger.

Hermione doesn't need him. The Daily Prophet doesn't say what happened to Hermione, but that doesn't really matter. Hermione doesn't need him – Hermione has never needed him, not like Harry has, and over the past year, Hermione has had Harry. Why would Hermione ever look at Archie the same way again, not when she had _Harry_ by her side for the past year? Harry is everything that Archie isn't, and Hermione's letters talked so much about how much she liked _Rigel_, and there's simply no way that Archie can compare to Harry.

And Healing. Archie is awful at Healing – he isn't _quite_ failing, but he's getting there, and even John Kowalski, whom Archie has always considered not serious enough for a career in Healing, has passed him in exam scores. Archie isn't keeping up, despite his best efforts in trying, and it seems like his experience at the Darien Gap is the best he'll ever get. He isn't cut out to be a Healer, apparently – his magic says so, his gifts say so, his grades say so. His hours and hours of sitting at his desk, staring at his books, unable to concentrate say so.

Archie's life is Harry, Hermione and Healing, and he doesn't have any of those things anymore. He hasn't been happy in years, and looking forward, he can't see anything except the Black family legacy, the madness, coming for him. His whole life is on a timeline (and isn't everyone's?), but his timeline has come to an end. He was only living for Harry, to protect Harry and the ruse, for Hermione whom he hoped to love, and for Healing, and he doesn't have any of those things anymore. More than that, with his knowledge, with his madness, he is now a danger to the people he loves.

He isn't unhappy. In fact, and that might be the oddest thing, he isn't unhappy. He is a little bit satisfied that, at least, Harry's career is on the road. She had a year and a half of an apprenticeship with Professor Snape, she had an internship under her own name, and now that she is unmasked, people will connect the dots, put it all together, and realize that she was the brilliant potions prodigy all along. Archie was a step in that process, but he was a critical one, and that is probably the proudest thing that anyone can say about his short life.

There will be nothing after this, nothing but the madness, so he stands up, and it feels like a weight has come off his neck. He doesn't have to try anymore. He doesn't have to sit and stare at books and watch his class standing fall anymore. He doesn't have to read letters from Hermione where she talks about how much she likes his cousin Rigel. He doesn't need to struggle, day in and day out, through another day, wishing he could sleep through it all. He doesn't need to fight the madness, the crushing _emptiness_ that follows his steps whenever he stops moving, whenever he stops being able to distract himself.

He heads towards AIM, his strides quick, loping, and he isn't paying attention when he nearly slams into John Kowalski on the front steps. He thinks that Kowalski is heading to Duelling practice, because he's wearing a wand holster on his arm, and he's dressed for a workout.

"Whoa!" Kowalski says, steadying Archie with a quick grab of his arm. "Sorry about that – I was in a hurry and I wasn't looking."

"No worries," Archie smiles in return, a quick, polite smile as he takes a step around Kowalski. "I wasn't looking either."

Kowalski tilts his head slightly, frowns, but he doesn't let go of Archie's arm. "Are you all right, man? You don't look all right."

"What are you talking about?" Archie laughs, and his laughter sounds odd to his ears. Not because it isn't real – it is probably the most genuine laughter he has had in years. "I'm fine. Better than ever."

Kowalski looks at him critically for a moment. "Look, man, I know we aren't friends or anything, but I know with Granger gone for the year, it has to be rough. If you ever need to talk, just a listening ear-"

"I'm fine," Archie repeats, and it's true. "Really."

"All right," Kowalski replies slowly, shaking his head. "I mean, you know where you can find me, right? We're in the same dorm."

"Yeah," Archie says, wondering why Kowalski is saying this _now, _why he's bringing this up _now. _"Thanks. You're running late."

"Yeah…" Kowalski says, with a quick breath, and he lets Archie go. "Yeah. See you later."

Archie smiles again, the same polite smile he had before, because it's the only one that feels natural on his face. Kowalski resumes his jog, running towards the pitch, and when the other boy is more than halfway there, Archie heads indoors.

He finds the worn stairwell heading to the roof easily, breaks the guard-spell on it the same way he always has, with a sharp stab of his Dark, aggressive magic into the lock. The spell falls away, and he heads upstairs, up the dark and gloomy steps that he thinks he might be the only AIM student to trod in years. It is a long staircase, the one leading to the rooftop, with locked doors at every landing leading to different floors. There are other staircases at AIM, but Archie has long since learned that this one is the most central one, and it's also a good shortcut between different wings of the school, even if it's always locked because it leads to the roof. It's the only staircase at AIM which opens onto the roof.

The door at the top is old, creaky, metal. Archie has always had to really push to get it open, throwing his weight against it. He's sure that Harry, with all her workouts and fitness training, would have been able to get it open in an instant, but he's always struggled. The door does open for him, after a few minutes, and Archie wiggles himself out.

The scene from the rooftop of AIM has always been beautiful, he reflects, standing at the top. The sun is setting, and the rolling grounds, the fields that he has always been able to see around the school, are lit on fire, burning orange. It's beautiful, the sunset, and Archie takes a good, long, look at it.

He's happy that he could have been a part of their lives, he thinks. It was good, those years, with Harry as his best friend, with Hermione at his side and a stack of Healing textbooks. It was nice to dream of the future. Nothing, not even the madness, can take those memories from him.

He steps off the ledge.

XXX

_ANs: First things first: thank you for reading, everyone! Special thanks to Anand, who beta'ed this particular work and picked out all the verb tense errors that seem to be rife whenever I write in present tense, and checked for British spellings too. Do leave me a review or a comment, I love reading them._

_This fic is a bit of two things: a thesis-in-a-oneshot, as well as a response-fic to the reactions for chapter 16 of From America with Love. One thing that has always bothered me about canon is the lack of detail we have on Archie and on AIM; Archie is described as a character who literally makes his first friend by being really enthusiastic and asking "will you be my friend" to the first person he meets, then he doesn't seem to make any other friends at all, to the point where Archie even comments that he doesn't really need more than one friend at a time anyway. Canonically, Harry/Rigel also rarely talks about AIM, and nearly all the details of AIM in From America With Love are invented. I've always seen this as having about three different solutions: _

_1) Archie does have other friends and a whole life at AIM, that he doesn't tell Harry about because he doesn't consider it important or relevant for her to know, essentially lying by omission (i.e. the From America with Love explanation)_

_2) Archie tells Harry more, but she doesn't tell us as the reader because she doesn't consider it important or relevant. I struggle deeply with this explanation because, if anything, Harry as a character is overly detailed in her description of things that she finds interesting, regardless of whether they are relevant or important. We literally know more about the essays she writes for her owl school courses and her owl school classes than we do about her best friend and cousin Archie. For me, I'm almost inevitably led to the conclusion that Harry as a character isn't very interested in what Archie does and doesn't really care about it, which is not generally how I want to view their relationship because they are supposed to care about each other. A one-liner like "Archie had gotten into Quodpot, the American game, and while Harry didn't really understand, she was fascinated by his enthusiastic explanation" would fit very neatly into any of their debrief sessions, or even and show her interest in his life. We don't have that._

_3) Archie does not have anything at AIM or in his life beyond what he tells Harry and that Harry canonically tells the reader. In some ways, this is the explanation with the most canonical support - Archie outright says that he doesn't need any more friends than Hermione, he is obsessive about Healing, and it is also consistent with their described, very close relationship. This Archie, of course, is blink's Archie._

_I suppose the question I'm going to get now is whether I'm going to continue writing or leave it here. Well, it is marked as complete, and obvious way out aside, I don't have a specific plan for a continuation (and honestly, do you really want to read a healing one-shot which is probably just as painful and long, for which I would have to invent essentially the entire system of wizarding mental health wards and accurately describe healing from something like this?), and would need to think it through quite a lot more. My priority right now is From America with Love, then Vanguard, so essentially: depends on time, magical idea fairy, and reader response (in about that order). Also, writing this dredged up a lot of very personal memories, so writing more would necessitate a break (the sleeping too much? Every "life is a choice" moment? Been there, done that, tough memories)._

_Finally, if you ever have feelings like this, you should probably talk to someone about them. Don't be like blink!Archie. _


End file.
